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I 



APROPOS 



OP 



Women and Theatres. 

Wll^ a ^aprcr ox tba on Parisian ^optn. 



BY 

ttotl^^', OLIVE (LOGAl^ 



"What I see, I say." 

(After Emerion.) 



NEW YORK: 

Carleton, Publisher. 

LONDON: S. LOW, SON, & CO. 
MDCCCLXIX. 



.UaA<f 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 

GEORGE W. CARLETON, 

in the Clerk's OflSce of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. 






Stereotyped by 
Thomas P. Peabody & Co., 

Eighth Street and Avenue A, 
New York. 



CONTENTS, 



FA6B 

I.— About Us 7 

II. — About Woman as a Helpmeet 23 

III. —About Voting 35 

rV. — About Bonnets 45 

V. — About Getting Photographed 53 

VI. — About the Quakers , . . . 64 

Vn. —About the Green-Room 76 

VIII. — About the Drunken Drama 89 

IX — About the Leg Business 110 

X. —About Nudity in Theatres 123 

XI.— About the "Run" 154 

XII.— About My First Year m Paris 165 

XIII. —About Mocquard 181 

XIV.— About Home Life in Paris 193 

XV. —About English Society in Paris 214 

(3) 



NOTE. 

Some of the matter in this volume appeared originally 
in periodicals copyrighted according to law. Though re- 
written for this book, — ia some cases to such a degree 
that little remains of the original article, — the copyrights 
of these periodicals are respected by the credit here given. 
In the following periodicals, portions of the subjoined chap- 
ters first appeared : — 

Harper's Monthly Magazine, Chapters XTI. , XIII. 
Putnam's Monthly Magazine, " XIV. 

Lippincott's Magazine, " XV. 

Packard's Monthly, " I., 11., X 

The Galaxy, " VHI., IX. 

(4) 



THE PREFACE, 



Sometimes I am in earnest, and sometimes I am 
in fun. 

The difficulty, my friends say, is to know when I 
am in earnest, — in what I write, of course. 

I answer: I am in earnest when what I write is 
on the side of The Right. 

When I say anything that does not receive your 
approval, you will at once conclude that I am in 
fun. 

If you run across a pun anywhere, you will of 
course be animated with a Johnsonian degree of dis- 
pleasure. There's the test of it. I am in fun then. 

If, apropos of woman's rights, I say it is not my 
nature to carp — or to fish of any kind — for faults 
in the other sex: that's in fun. 

If, apropos of politics, the remark being in order 
that consistency is a jewel, I should say that the 
1* * (5) 



Tl PREFACE. 

consistency of most politicians is gift-jewelry: that's 
in fun. 

If I should remark, apropos of the interference 
of noisy man at woman's meetings, that there is an 
old adage about two men he cooks spoiling the broth : 
that's in fun. 

But if I say anything straightforward, steadfast 
and true, apropos of virtue, honor, decency, intelli- 
gence, industry, and The Right, be very sure that 
then I am profoundly in earnest. Then I mean 
exactly what I say, and will stand by it just so long 
as I believe it, without much regard to anything but 
the value of Truth. 

OLIVE LOGAN. 

AtJTHOBS' Union, 264 Pearl Stbeet, 
Ksw YOSK, June, 1869. 



APROPOS OF WOMEN AM) THEATRES. 



ABOUT US, 




Y US, I mean ourselves, of course, — 
women. 

It is tlie fashion to write about USj 
and it is the fashion for us to write about our- 
selves ; but is it the fashion for other people 
to read what we write, or what others wi'ite 
about Us? 

I mean, of course, on the Geeat Subject, — 
our political, mental, moral, social, physical, and 
general advancement. 

Anything else that is written about women, 
particularly if it be anything scandalous or dis- 
graceful, is eagerly perused. 

I have watched men narrowly at all sorts of 

(7) 



8 ABOUT US. 

public places — in the railway cars, in the omni- 
buses, on the boats — and I have generally ob- 
served that when there is an article in the paper 
about Women's Hights, men skip it quickly, and 
turn the newspaper inside out. 

But if it is some trifling story, derogatory to 
the dignity of woman, or some stupid scandal 
about a flirtation, or some hideous relation of 
conjugal shame, they pore over it as if the read- 
ing of it were one of the chief duties of the day. 

The fact is, that the woman question is one of 
those vexed ones for which it is difficult to find a 
satisfactory answer, which is yet hard to get 
around, and which is yet again apt to become 
prosy. 

It is the negro in a white face — and petticoats. 

But, if the men of our country were able to 
swallow the black man, I think it a wonder, 
indeed, if they can't get the white woman at 
least as far as their lips. 

The mistake — or so it seems to me — of most 
ladies who advocate the " rights " of their sex, 
and also of most gentlemen who advocate the 
same for them, is, that their arguments are put 



ABOUT US. y 

forward in too indignant and aggressive a 
manner. 

The result is, an indignant and aggressive re- 
ception of them by les autres, 

I don't wonder at all (between ourselves) 
that these ladies are indignant and aggressive. 
(Aside.) But, dears, let's wheedle ; jou see we 
are not strong enough to knock them down, 
and in some respects they are useful, so let's 
gain our point by 

Coaxing ! 

Gentlemen, sweet gentlemen, amiable gentle- 
men, here is the woman question again. 

At least, here is one woman's question : 

Won't you please, like good darlings as you 
are, (ugh !) allow us the privilege of supporting 
ourselves ? 

Or will yoti, support Us ? 

!N"o, thank you, I don't mean just your own 
wives, and daughters, and sisters, and mothers. 

I mean, will you set aside a fund for the sup- 
port of the promiscuous female, so that she may 
not ask to vote any more, nor to enter any 
profession more elevated than the sewing-ma- 
cliinist's ? 



10 ABOUT US. 

As for voting, /wouldn't think of doing such 
a thing ! 

No; unless I were fully satisfied my vote 
would be received, I would never, never wend 
my way to the polls. 

Because, as you say, gentlemen, how unfemi- 
nine for women to meet the rough crowd — to 
come into contact with horrible men — who 
would push us and squeeze us ! 

It is true, we meet much the same crowds at 
the theatres, and in the stages and horse-cars; 
and, so far as my observation goes, I think 
women get as much squeezing in a Sixth avenue 
car, on a rainy afternoon, as they are likely to 
get at any poll that ever was raised. 

TVith my experience of New York horse-cars, I 
stand prepared to meet the rude democrat, in his 
native shirt-sleeves, at the polls or elsewhere. 

After a liberal course of horse-car, any woman 
who survives is qualified to vote. 

It is argued that women are the inferiors, men- 
tally, morally, and physically, of men. 
Sometimes they are ; and sometimes — 



ABOUT US. 11 

But I confess my weakness, when it comes to 
argument. In illustration lies my chief strength. 

So, to illustrate : 

I have a tenth cousin, who lives in Albany. 

Being a man, he is mentally, morally, and 
physically my superior. 

He has the privilege of voting, and of prac- 
tising what he calls law, without invidious com- 
ment. 

He has been down in New York for a week. 

Literally down in Kew York, — down in its 
drinking saloons, down in its gambling Hoyles, 
and, finally, down in its gutters. 

But, morally, he is my superior, you observe. 
]S"ot merely the superior of Us, but the superior 
of Me. 

I set him to collect a bad debt of mine two 
years ago. Then the man owed me two hundred 
dollars ; now (how T) I owe him something. 

That my cousin's mental faculties are more 
brilliant than those of poor Me is evident from 
this. 

Finally, for two days past, he has been hanging 
around our office in a maudlin condition, dis- 



12 ABOUT US. 

gracing me before my fellow-writers; and 
so, yesterday, when nobody was looking, I gave 
him a slight push, and — I haven't seen him 
since. 

But then, physically, you know — 

It seems to me if ever arguments were silly 
and groundless, they are those which are used to 
rebut the advancement of women. 

Not that argument is going to prevent woman 
from advancing. The woman who is determined 
to advance will advance. 

The trouble with most women is, that they 
don't get up the requisite degree of determi- 
nation. 

How much earnest, unflinching endeavor is 
any woman likely to give to any employment 
which, as she calculates, shall serve her purpose 
through two or ten years, at the end of which 
time she intends to get married, and throw up 
her occupation for ever ? 
. Here lies the stone in the path of Us. 

From our earliest years we are not taught, as 
boys are, that we have our fortunes in our own 



ABOUT US. 13 

hands, that we must earn the bread we eat, all 
our lives, that we must carve out our own for- 
tunes. 

We are taught, even the poorest of Us, that 
marriage is our end and aim, and that as soon as 
we are married the man we marry will care for 
Us. 

It is time we stopped hallooing to the world 
that that ugly ogre, Man, is unjust to Us. 

He will marry Us, but he won't pay Us as 
much for our work as he will pay one of his own 
sex. 

Alas, my sister woman ! You can never earn 
journeymen's wages till you know your trade, 
and can do as good work as a man can. 

You never can do that till you resolve, when 
you set out to learn a trade, that you will learn it 
thoroughly, and with the determination that at 
that trade you will work all the rest of your life, 
just as men do. 

What ! a woman work at her trade after mar- 
riage? 

Even so. In France, this is invariably the 
case. Jean works no more faithfully at his 
3 



14 ABOUT US. 

occupation than does Marie at hers. She can 
support herself till the end of life just as easily 
as he can. When they marry each other, they 
become partners, in every sense of the word. 

Their interests lie together; there is no de- 
grading sense of dependence on the part of the 
wife, and marriages are happier there than with 
us, — divorces unknown. 

I am not holding up the French people ex- 
actly as a model for imitation by our own nation ; 
but there are some things in the French life 
which we can well profit by. 

Let us accept a good example, though it should 
be set us by a nation of cannibals, — which the 
French are not, by the way. 

Until our girls pursue their avocations as in- 
dustriously and as ambitiously as our boys do, 
they will never become as good workers, and, 
consequently, they won't get as good pay. 

In some of the towns out West, waiter-girls at 
hotel tables prevail to an alarming extent. 

I say alarming, because with these girl- waiters 
one's best silk dress is never safe. One knows 
not at what moment one may have gravy be- 
stowed upon one as a hair oil. 



ABOUT US. 15 

Tliey are lazy, vain, pert, and inefficient to an 
exasperating degree. 

They flirt and flit about the dining-room, lend- 
ing half an ear to your demands; while both 
eyes, and the other ear and a half are on tiie 
watch for a husband. 

J^ecessarily these are most unsatisfactory 
waiter-girls. They are, in reality, waiting girls 
— waiting for a husband. 

It is quite impossible, under these circum- 
stances, that girls should receive as good pay for 
waiting at the table as the well-drilled male 
waiter receives, who attends to liis business, and 
is not on the look-out for a wife, while in the 
dinmg-room, at least. 

There are certainly two branches of industry 
in this world where men and women stand on an 
absolutely equal plane in the matter of cash re- 
ward. 

These are literature and the drama. 

The stufl that critics write being altogether set 
aside, the proof of the quality of a woman's work 
is exactly that same matter of pay. 



16 ABOUT US. 

"Wlien we brin2: to other avenues of labor an 
ambition as ardent, a zeal as earnest, as that 
which some of Us have brought to the theatre 
and the study, then will the dooi*s open wide for 
Us. 

Women pushed these doors open themselves, 
and men have given Us a seat by their side ever 
since, within these temples. 

Mrs. Browning, Mrs. Lewes, Jean Ingelow, 
Madame Dudevant, Mrs. Stowe, Charlotte 
Bronte, Mrs. Howe, — these belong to Us. 

Mrs. Siddons, Miss Cushman, Mrs. Kemble, 
Bachel, Ristori, Mrs. Kean, Helen Faucit, Mrs. 
Lander, — these belong to Us. 

And besides these, and others as distinguished 
in these two fields of labor, is a vast army of 
others, of every grade — from the poorest writer 
of poor poetry to the most graceful magazinist — 
from the littlest walking lady to the most popu 
lar star actress, — all belonging to Us. 

These all receive the same reward for what 
they do that men on the same level receive. 

The reason why is, merely that in these two 
departments women have long worked as men 



ABOUT US. 17 

work, — with the same purpose of life-long occu- 
pation that men have. The door was long ago 
pushed open, and to-day stands wide. 

It has long been customary for people to pre- 
dict, when an actress marries off the stage, that 
she will speedily return to it ; and to say, sneer- 
ingly, that she cannot live without the " excite- 
ment " of it. 

In one case in twenty, that is true ; in nineteen 
cases out of twenty, it is false. 

An actress is a woman, who, from the moment 
she steps her foot on the stage to the moment she 
leaves it, is in receipt of a salary as good as that 
of an actor of the same degree. 

Be that salary more or less (and it is generally 
more than she can earn at any other honest occu- 
pation), it is hers — her own — to spend as she 
likes, without question. 

She marries. 

Marries a young man in a diy goods store, let 
us say, who is manifestly making a mesalliance 
in espousing this pretty and gifted woman, whose 
mother is indignant at him for doing so, and 



18 ABOUT U8. 

doesn't speak to him till after the first baby is 
born. 

Thus the actress finds herself immediately in a 
false position; her husband feels that her posi- 
tion is false; and, having himself placed her in 
that position, at once begins to snub her for 
being there. 

This gentleman has married on a salary of 
twenty dollars a week, and expects to support a 
family on that — when his wife has previously 
been in the receipt of forty a week, with no one 
to support but herself. 

Then begin pinchings and petty questionings : 

"Wliat did you do with that dollar I gave 
you? Eh! Good gracious, spent fifty cents of 
it this morning! Well, with your extravagant 
habits, we shall soon be ruined." 

And then, by and by, comes that manly cry, — • 

"Well, it serves me right for marrying an 
actress ! " 

Then quarrels. She has not been accustomed 
to rendering up an account for the merest penny 
in this way; she has been used to having her 
own money. 



ABOXTT U8, 19 

"Yes, but you have no money of your own 
now, remember that; and you must take what 
/choose to give you, or go without." 

More quarrels. And, by and by, when her 
beauty is all gone, and she has three or four 
children clinging about her knees, at once aug- 
menting and diminishing her misery, she crawls 
back wretchedly to the stage again. 

"Ah-h-h! I told you so. Couldn't live with- 
out the ^excitement!' Well, he had no business 
to marry an actress ! " 

When this clerk in a dry goods store married 
this actress, he should have allowed her to remain 
on the stage. 

" Oh, but that's impossible ! His dignity would 
not allow it ! " 

Fudge ! Emphatically, fudge ! I don't believe 
in the dignity of a dry goods clerk. 

Dry goods clerking is a woman's business, and, 
in passing, I would advise all young men who 
ire now measuring tapes and ribbons to get out 
3f it as soon as they can, and leave the occupa- 
:ion to that sex which is mentally, morally, and 
physically their inferior. 



20 ABOUT US, 

If this actress had been allowed to remain on 
the stage, in receipt of her forty dollars, the joint 
income of the couple would have been sixty 
dollars a week, and contentment. 

How proudly, how gladly she would have 
turned over her earnings to her husband ! How 
lovingly, how gratefully she would have received 
his tribute of praise for her labors ! 

That is, if she were a true and good woman. 
If she was not, he had no business to marry her 
at all, or any other such woman. 

But how is a woman to attend to her house- 
hold duties if she has an occupation outside of 
her own home ? 

" She must hire all her work done. If she 
have a large family, it will take two or three 
servants to attend properly to the household. 
Such a wasteful expense ! " 

If I had not heard people talk in this way, 
I should hardly believe it possible for human 
nature to be so absurd. 

Do you know any man of your acquaintance 
— any successful business man, or any skilled 



ABOUT US. 21 

workman — who would stay at home to save 
hiring a servant for home-work ? 

I have tried that kind of saving myself on 
several occasions, when I have had what I call 
the " old Ben Franklin " on me. I have sat at 
home in a corner for three days mending an old 
dress, when, if I had devoted those three days to 
my legitimate business — writing — I could have 
earned enough to buy a new dress, given the job 
of making it to a competent dressmaker, and the 
old dress to some poor woman, more needy than 
myself. 

ISTow, girls, be men! Learn your business 
thoroughly. 

Let no employer have it in his power to say 
your work is slovenly, and that you're only work- 
ing along until you can catch a man ; and that 
one man can work faster and better than three 
women. 

If he can, of course he deserves three times 
your wages ; but there is no good reason why you 
should not be as clever as he, if you will only 
try. 



22 



ABOXTT US. 



And when yon are as clever as lie, and can 
earn tlie wages he can, God's blessing on -yonr 
union, if he asks you to be, and you consent to be, 
his helpmeet. 




n. 



ABOUT WOMAN AS A HELPMEET. 




HAT makes a woman truly a helpmeet 
to her husband? 

In the first place, Love. 

Without love as a first plank in the platform, 
there is no use whatever in discussing the ques- 
tion. The platform won't hold together without 
that plank, whatever other timber there be in it. 

But love is not enough. 

It is very sad, but it is true — and as trite as 
true — that "love won't boil the pot;" and what 
is worse, it won't put that into the pot which 
makes it worth the boiling. 

A boiled pot wouldn't be very nice eating 
without " fixin's." 

The beggar who made a delicious soup, just 
by boiling a stone in his pot, had to put in a lit- 



24 ABOUT WOMAN AS A HELPMEET, 

tie salt to season it, and a bit of beef to give it a 
flavor, and a few vegetables to tone it up. 

So, if even love would "boil the pot," love 
would not be sufficient, unless it would fill the 
pot, too. 

Love is the prime requisite to successful en- 
deavor on a woman's part to be her husband's 
true helpmeet ; but love alone is very far from be- 
ing all that is required. 

There are coimtless thousands of women who 
love their husbands truly, and who are no more 
helpmeets to them than if they were wooden 
women, whittled out with a jack-knife. 

I know a lady who is (in the eye of the law) 
married, and who does not love her husband. 
Hers is not an isolated case. 

She is one of the " lucky creatures," " husband 
so rich," " ugly thing, how did she manage to 
catch him ? " etc. 

She is a respectable woman, as the world goes ; 
she hates her husband cordially, tells him and 
everybody so, and does not find solace, as most 
French women would, in a lover. 



ABOUT WOMAN AS A HELPMEET^. 25 

So far well. Slie is very severe on those 
poor creatures who sin in company with shame. 

It is so easy, with a rich husband, to belong to 
that class of Christians Mrs. Browning tells us 
of — 

*'Good Christians, who sit still in easy chairs, 
And damn the general world for standing up." 

One day, not very long ago, seeing her purse 
full of money, one said to her, — 

" How liberal your husband is to you ! " 

A shade of disgust passed over her face ; then 
pointing to her three children, she said, with a 
Bhudder, — 

" I earn the money he gives me." 

It was a careless remark ; but what a flood of 
truth's light poured out then ! 

By how much — tell me, somebody^ is this 
woman better, in the eyes of God, who sees not 
as men see, than the woman who earns her money 
in the same way without legal ties ? 

"Would it not be a cleaner thing, in the sight 
of heaven, if this woman were working, in a cot- 
ton dress, side by side with her fellow-man ? 
3 



26 ABOUT WOMAN AS A HELPMEET. 

Is slie, in any noble or true sense, a helpmeet 
to her husband ? 

The first and greatest misf ortnne women have 
to encounter is, that, in marrying, most men don't 
ask themselves whether the object of their choice 
is fitted to be a helpmeet. A man generally 
marries because he wants somebody to love him 
and caress him. He also wants his wife to look 
pretty, and be bright and cheerful, that other men 
may envy him his possession. 

But that sort of thing won't last through the 
vicissitudes of a lifetime. 

When years roll on, and misfortunes come, 
and the silly little loving wife has become firmly 
rooted in her dawdling habits, he savagely turns 
on her, and reproaches her for not being a help- 
meet. 

There is nothing but misery for her, poor crea- 
ture, after that. 

Therefore, the other plank in our platform is 
this : 

To be a true helpmeet to her husband, the 
woman must have the ability to earn her living 
independently of him. 



ABOUl WOMAir AS A HELPMEET. 27 

!N"o woman can earn her own living indepen- 
dently of her husband by baby-tending. 

I mean, of course, by tending her own babies. 
If she adopt the profession of a nurse, the case 
may be different. 

When you talk with intelligent men on the sub- 
ject of skilled labor, you find that they have but 
one opinion as to the best way of getting work 
done thoroughly. 

They tell you that the man who is a Jack-of- 
all-trades is a master of none. 

They tell you that the man who makes- a great 
success in life is the man who masters one field 
of labor completely, — who educates himself up 
to the highest point of skilfulness in that field 
alone. 

The best editors in this country are men who 
have been bred to their work in that college of 
editors, — the printing office. 

The worst editors are those men who have 
taken up editorship after having given trial to 
mercantile hfe, or farming, or medicine, and 
who will most probably di'op editorship by-and-by 



28 ABOUT WOMAN AS A HELPMEET, 

for the law, or perhaps the stage, and do as ill 
in these again, being thorough in none. 

It stands to reason that the best baby-tender 
mnst be the woman who educates herself specially 
for that pursuit. 

How many women who become mothers do 
this? 

And of those women who Jiave bent all their 
energies to perfect themselves in the art of 
baby-tending, how many can earn their living 
by it? 

I once lived in a house with a young couple 
who had a baby of about ten months old, — a 
great, fine, strapping fellow, as heavy in one's 
arms as a load of iron, and yet unable to walk. 

The father was a book-keeper in a store on 
Broadway, at a salary of thirty dollars a week. 
They paid twenty-two dollars a week for their 
board, which, the husband said, was as " reasona- 
ble as he could find, for a room as comfortable as 
the one they occupied," though I considered it far 
from comfortable. It was a small, back room, 
dull and cheerless, on the third floor. 



ABOUT WOMAN AS A HELPMEET. 29 

-• 
Three times a day tlds delicate young girl (the 

baby's mother) was obliged to carry that strapping 

child up and down four flights of stairs to meals, 

— for the dining-room was in the basement. She 

never could get a meal in peace, for she had to 

hold the baby on: her knees while she was eating, 

and it would whine and cry, and half the time 

she had to leave the dining-room altogether ; while 

her great, hearty husband would sit still, and 

complacently bolt his meal with the utmost 

composure, never thinking of her. 

The baby was teething ; and at breakfast she 
often told us that she had been up and down all 
night long, walking the floor to soothe it. 

She was as pale as a ghost, and had black rings 
around her eyes that were enough to startle one. 

But they were so newly married, and evidently 
loved each other so dearly — this couple — that I 
thought she was as happy a woman as there was 
to be found in Xew York. 

And she was a woman occupying what is 

facetiously denominated the "true woman's 

sphere;" receiving every morsel of food from 

her husband, every stitch of clothing, never 

3* 



so ABOUT WOMAN AS A HELPMEET, 

having a penny she could call her own, and 
in return nursing her baby every minute from 
the day it was born through the successive 
stages of limp-backedness until now, when it 
seemed — except that it could not walk — 
stronger than its mother. 

" Ah," thought I, joyfully, " here is a refuta- 
tion of all my arguments. Here is a woman 
perfectly happy, and who is living in servitude 
and baby-tending ! " 

One day, after I had done a hard day's work 
at writing, I sat at the dinner table opposite the 
couple, and said, 

" Oh, Mrs. X, how fortunate you are to have 
a good husband, who provides for you, and pays 
everything for you, relieving you of this horrid 
toil of working for bread-money ! " 

"That's what I tell her," said the husband, 
hastily, and with an unpleasantly triumphant 
tone ; " if she had to go out and work for her 
living, she'd find out what it is." 

" I earn my living now," said the wife, with 
quiet dignity ; " I do a servant's work, and get no 
pay, — only my board. A servant gets board and 
wages too." 



ABOUT WOMAN AS A EELPMEET, 31 

The next day slie spoke to me again, with 
tears in her eyes, — 

" I envy you^'' she said 'to me, who considered 
myself so hard worked as to be in a very 
unenviable position, — ^"I envy yonr being able to 
go out into the air, and work like an intelligent 
being for a livelihood, instead of being shut up, 
day after day, night after night, nursing a baby. 
I love my baby, God knows ; but I do get tired 
nursing him sometimes. And look how foolish 
it is, too," continued she, unwittingly using my 
own arguments; "I am a fine di^essmaker, and 
earned my living easily by that work before I 
was married. And so I could now, if my hus- 
band would only let me work at my trade." 

"Why don't he?" 

" In the first place, he is too proud ; in the 
second, he says if I were to work I'd have to 
hire a girl to nurse the baby, and that would be 
an expense." 

" How much would a girl's wages be ? " 

"About two dollars a week. I used to earn 
eighteen at dressmaking in my native town in 
Massachusetts. I could earn more here in ITew 
York. I'm a beautiful fitter." 



32 AJ^OUT WOMAN A8 A HELPMEET. 

And yet this couple grubbed on in mutual 
dissatisfaction, at the very outset of their married 
life, when all should have been brightness; 
loving each other too, but grumbling, discon- 
tented, she reproaching him for making a 
servant of her, and he upbraiding her for not 
being a helpmeet to him. 

If it be necessary, in order that a woman 
may be a helpmeet to her husband, that she 
should be able to earn her own living, then she 
has but one thing to do to qualify herself for 
that office, namely, to educate herself just as 
Tnen do in the habits of labor. 

Skill in mechanism, finances, art, literature, or 
any industrial calling is nothing more nor less 
than habits of labor. 

When men will consent to do Bridget's work, 
then I will. 

Till then, don't talk to me about housekeeping 
and baby-tending as woman's only proper 
employment. 

^ It is the only proper employment of women 
who are incapable of higher work. 



ABOUT WOMAN AS A HELPMEET. 33 

The fashionable lady — the wife of a wealthy 
citizen — a Belmont, a Roosevelt, a Stewai-t, is 
exempt from the necessity of performing labor 
of any sort. She neither washes her own clothes, 
makes her own bed, nor devotes her time solely 
to the care of her babies. She has an experienced 
servant to do it; jnst as her Imsband has an 
experienced schoolmaster to teach them their 
lessons. 

"Why should not women in the hnmbler walks 
of life be granted the same immunity, so that 
they may be left to do more remunerative work ? 

Some of the religious papers have been horri- 
fied, I hear, by my views on this subject. 

They are horrified, because they distort my 
meaning. 

If any one says to me that it is necessaiy to 
NEGLECT the culture of your children's heads and 
hearts in order that you may be a helpmeet to 
your husband, I reply that such an assertion as 
that is rubbish. 

Give me your ear, you editor, who earn the 
bread of your family while your wife sits at 



34: ABOUT WOMAN A8 A HELPMEET. 

home doing servant's work; do you neglect 
your boy's mind and heart because you have 
work to do out in the world ? 

I don't believe you do. 

I don't believe, either,- that it is necessary your 
wdfe should neglect the real duties of a mother 
toward her children in order to earn her share of 
the yearly income which pays their nurses, their 
servants, and baby-tenders. 

Your wife becomes truly your helpmeet when 
she can carry on your household alone, were you 
to be taken sick or to die, as well as you could 
were she to be taken sick or to die. 

I look for the day to come when women shall 
exercise freely and without reproach many privi- 
leges which men now enjoy unshared, — even to 
the king-privilege of the vote. 




in. 



ABOUT YOTINQ. 



GEEAT deal has been said favorably 
and unfavorably in regard to granting 
the elective franchise to women. 

I am of rather an enthusiastic nature, and my 
very blood boils in the kettle of my imagination, 
heated by the gas stove of patriotic fire, when 
I think of being possessor of my own poll, of 
having a ballot all to myself, and embroidering 
sweetly on the political canvass. 

And then think how I could slake the thirst of 
my revenge on Bifkins, — Bifkins, who always 
steps on my dress and tears the hem, — by voting 
against his wife's brother, whom by the way, I 
never saw. 

And then our next-door neighbor, Mrs. ITo-ton, 
ne'er should her husband be Mayor (if I could 



36 ABOUT VOTING, 

help it), so long as slie didn't invite our Grade to 
her tea-parties. 

Many slights I can stand, many insults I can 
sit; but when it becomes a question of our 
Grade's happiness, you can easily understand 
that my blood again boils (according to the usual 
custom). 

What do I care whether or not Mr. ISTo-ton is 
"eminently qualified for the high office"? I 
don't believe a word of it. 

If he is, why don't liis wife invite our Gracie 
to her tea-parties? 

A very pretty girl is our Gracie. Long flaxen 
curls, and pinky cheeks, and teeth white as pearls. 

!N"o-ton isn't very tidy in his personal appear- 
ance, and Gracie says she thinks that any one 
who votes for him will vote the dirty ticket. 

But she's a little spiteful, is Gracie ; and no 
wonder, for it was very insulting in them to invite 
Bifkins' girls, and leave our pretty Gracie out in 
the cold. 

But Gracie is a brave girl, and contents lierself 
with making faces behind No-ton's back, and 
assuring that wide portion of his anatomy that if 



ABOUT VOTING. 37 

she could vote, the only office he should ever 
hold would be that little dark dirty one in Pearl 
street where he now belongs, and which has no 
furniture in it except some nasty petroleum put 
up in mysterious little bottles, looking for all the 
world, each one of them, like a " dose for an adult " 
of castor oil. 

Gracie says she's so glad I belong to the 
Pen-ian Brotherhood, because I can take mine in 
hand, and have a fling at E'o-ton in the newspapers. 

But the truth is, I am rather disgusted with the 
present style of newspaper warfare ; and, though I 
am much offended at the ]N"o-tons' conduct, I shall 
not accuse either him or his wife of highway 
robbery. 

That is the popular mode of expressing disap- 
probation now, in our chaste and elegant daily 
papers. 

The taste for inve^ctive seems to be growing 
much more rapidly than the facility of its expres- 
sion; so, thinldng over the matter the other 
evening, it struck me that the following exple- 
tives would be rather novel and altogether 
appropriate. 



38 ABOUT VOTING. 

I place them quite at the disposal of whoever 
has occasion to use them. 

For instance, we might stigmatize the different 
persons on the opposition ticket as — 

The Wirz^of the Sifth Ward. 

The Black-Mailer of Beekman street. 

The Caligula of modern times, now candidate 
for the office of Judge of the Extreme Court. 

The fiddleless l!^ero of the Fiddlety-first district. 

The Judge Jeffries of our day ; now striving 
to get into our law courts. A hideous red tape- 
worm, whom nobody's vermifuge will affect. 

The male Lucretia Borgia of Bond street. 
The sacrilegious wretch has often tried to poison 
the Pope's Tow with Calasaya Barque, and is 
even now endeavoring to throw dust in the Eyes 
of the Holy See. 

These mild appelatives might be varied, daca- 
poed, accelerated, or retarded, at pleasure. Just 
as in a piece of music the composer gives us the 
motivo, and then the variations. 

The motivo of using vituperative terms by 
these people is evident enough: one "party" 
doesn't want the other elected. 



ABOUT VOTING. ^y 

But did it ever strike you that if only one- 
nineteenth part of what the defeated party said 
of the other is true, why then we must be living 
under the rule of about as cheerful a set of 
scoundi-els as were ever fashioned by Nature's 
journeymen, who didn't make them well, because 
they imitate Nature so abominably? 

If you want me to tell you the candid, the 
true truth, I'll confess at once to you that the 
blessing of not being allowed to vote is one of the 
best-disguised blessings I ever met. 

I wouldn't, on any consideration you could 
mention, have the responsibility of a choice in so 
vital a matter as choosing whether the alderman- 
ship should be given to McWhacker or O'Doodle. 

I have a peculiar faculty for being deceived, — 
a stupid but unalterable belief that everybody is 
the best fellow in the world, which might lead 
me into the mistake of voting for two opposing 
candidates, merely because I liked them both. 
This little error would be awkward, wouldn't it ? 

It might even get me into trouble. 

And then the agony of anticipating the prac- 
tice of that horribly iniquitous proceeding, the 



4:0 ABOUT VOTING. 

"gum game," wliicli O'Doodle insists defeated 
Seymour; the hideous nightmare in the shape 
of illegal voters coming forward en masse and 
" squelching " your favorite candidate ; the lively 
prospect of a fight at the ballot-box, where by 
mistake your own party, thinking you are an 
opponent, pounce down upon you with clubs, and 
beat you lustily ! 

It don't help the matter much in such case 
when, on discovering the error, they aver that 
they are sorry, and intimate that a "Bourbon 
sour," in which they kindly will join to the 
number of about ^ixty, will set you on "your 
pins" again. 

"Pins" indeed are your manly lower limbs as 
they appear in the emaciated condition after a 
three weeks' confinement to your room, which 
follows the beating you have received. 

Do you stigmatize these fighters by the unmu- 
sical term " roughs " ? 

How slandej?ous! l^ay, they are "gentles." 

But from all these miseries, — contemplative, 
apprehensive and actual, — thank goodness! I am 
exempt. (It is so nice to have something to be 
thankful for !) 



ABOUT VOTING. 41 

I'm going to add another line to my Litany : 

From all voting, fighting, biting, and elections, 
Good Laws Deliver Us. 

I am told the girls of the period are crying 
loudly for universal snffi*age. 

Wretched beings ! 

As if to suffer age was not already a universal 
complaint. 

(If you should remark that this joke is vener- 
able, I remark in reply that I can't help that. 
The only wonder to me is, that, considering all 
the witty people who have lived before us, and 
spoken the English language, they have left 
anything new under the pun still to be said.) 

To be sure, there are certain situations in 
which excessive youth is a disadvantage. 

It would, for instance, militate against an 
applicant for the Premiership of England, which 
doubtless is the reason why the juvenescent editor 
of the weakly Snarler does not apply at once for 
a situation, which by his virtues and statesman- 
like qualities he is so eminently fitted to hold. 

Long may he wave, in the Land of the We 
and the Home of the Fanfaronade. 



42 ABOUT VOTING. 

This thunder is only mine with a difference ; 
but if the bards of other days will say all the 
funny things, why, cui hono f 

(I had an idea of putting nHriypovte in there, 
but I remembered that French is getting rather 
common now, and Latin looks much more 
imposing, so I made it eui hono. It hasn't the 
slightest relation to the sentence, but that is 
altogether a minor consideration.) 

Yes, as I remarked, cui hono? And in that 
case, wherefore? 

The fact is, I am getting slightly mixed up 
here. What with age and elections, and youth 
and editors, my intellect totters. 

I am only a woman. 

I take refuge once more in the classics. What 
does the po£t say about youth and age ? 

He sweetly murmurs that we gather shells 
from youth to age, and then we leave them like 
a child. 

I was ever of an improvident nature, and, if 
you'll believe me, I haven't gathered a single 
shell. 

If I had, I suppose I should have followed the 



ABOUT VOTING, 43 

precept given in the same song, and flnng them 
one by one away, wliich wonld have put me in 
the same condition as if I hadn't gathered them,- 
wouldn't it? Therefore — and this time I feel 
my feet again on solid ground — cui 'bono f 

There was a time when I might have made a 
play (not a piece — Oh, no! don't mistake me) a 
play on the word " shell " in relation to the elec- 
tions. 

There used to be "hard shells" and "soft 
shells." JSTow I hear of these no more. The 
former bearers of the name may, in a political 
sense, smell as sweet by any other one, but the 
word itself, the one which used to characterize 
them, is apparently shellved. 

So surely as the sun turns on the stick which 
runs through the middle of the apple, so surely 
does political, newspaperial and social slang fade 
away in the west of the horizon of language, and 
sink deep down into the Slough of Despond of 
fleeting metaphor. 

And even so sink I. When the fingers which 
now clasp this valuable gold pen, — (presented me 
by an admirer of literature to persuade me to 



u 



ABOUT VOTING, 



"quit"), — when those lingers, I say, have 
wrought their last battle, then it will be a sweet 
thought, that, amid all the strife and turmoil of 
political life, I was content to remain a woman, 
and never troubled my intellect about any question 
graver than that of the newest thing in bonnets. 




TV. 



ABOUT BONNETS. 




DOIT'T know that I altogether like the 
above cap-tion. 

It makes me look as if I were 
a milliner. 

But the truth is, although above all things I 
pride myself on being modest, I never was a 
modiste. 

Perhaps yon think it is not modest to say I 
am modest. 

Bnt it appears no one else will do me this jus- 
tice, so what can I do but take justice in my 
own hands and my pen in ditto ? 

You know, I suppose, that the pen is mightier 
than the sword. This disposes of the argument 
that women ought to be able to bear the sword 
before they can be trusted with the vote. 



46 ABOUT BONNETS. 

If we can be trusted with the pen, that will do. 

Few women of this generation will be called 
npon, let ns hope, to wield the Damascene blade, 
or bear arms. 

Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof ; and 
while we are compelled to endure the young 
blade of the period, we ought not to be asked to 
bear any more. 

By the way, how do you like "blade," as 
applied to the festive American youth of this 
century ? 

As our existence as a nation only stretches over 
a period of about ninety years, I suppose there 
were no Amerioan youths, festive or otherwise, of 
any other century; but that has nothing to do 
"v\dth my question. 

What do you think of "blade"? 

Z think it is about the most nonsensical noun 
to apply to a man I ever heard. 

It is on a par with those other charming appel- 
latives, — " buck," and " young blood." 

These are now happily obsolete. 

They belong to that pedantic and conventional 
old school which permits, even encourages, 



ABOUT BONNETS. 47 

such enormities as the words "Zounds!" and 
"Egad," for the-iise of families and schools, and 
has a strong penchant for "What ho!" and 
"Within there!" for the requirements of the 
restaurant. 

These expressions are still in Yogue on the 
stage, but, thank Providence, nowhere else. 

In fact, a great many things are in vogue on 
the stage which are not the least bit so in private 
life. 

There seems to be something in the odor of the 
foot-lights which chases away every atom of 
nature, induces a disposition to mouth words, 
tends to altogether destroy grace, and temporarily 
shows the really great disadvantage of having 
hands. 

But I have somewhat strayed from my subject, 
which was — ah, yes — Bonnets. 

It must be the subject is too deep for my fem- 
inine mind, or I should not continually wander 
away from it, and shirk it in this manner. 

There is no denying that fashionable bonnets 
are always frightfully ugly. 



4:8 ABOUT BONNETS. 

The plea set up iu their favor to the effect that 
they are "stylish" is no more founded on fact 
than those tales are which make the Indian a 
very noble creature. 

But "stylish" is a fashionable word now-a- 
days, and is applied indiscriminately to the most 
extraordinary and ordinary articles. 

Miss Shoddia, now de retour from Saratoga, 
has a number of stylish things ; a stylish bonnet, 
a stylish horse, stylish gloves, a stylish coupe, and 
a great many very stylish beaux. 

Sometimes I think she has a stylish heart as 
well. 

It certainly is the stylish shade. 

The "shade" of a heart! What an absurd 
expression ! 

Not at all. Miss Shoddia's heart is shade, not 
substance. 

How can any woman be said to possess a heart 
who walks Broadway during a period of three 
hours every day of her life for the express, 
almost avowed, purpose of meeting men for 
whom, or for whose welfare, she does not care a 
button \ 



ABOUT BONNETS. 49 

Indeed, buttons may be quite valuable some- 
times, — as when they are set with diamonds; 
but is this "style " of man, — he who walks Broad- 
way for the pui-pose of meeting Shoddia, — is he 
.valuable ? 

I would not have him at any price. 

If I drew him in a lottery, I should most cer- 
tainly throw him back again into the box. 

But what has this to do with Bonnets ? 

A great deal. 

This is the man who, while he flatters and 
cajoles poor, silly Shoddia into the belief that the 
Medici Yenus was the cheapest of vin ordinaire 
compared to her lovely self, and that her costume 
(not Medici's but Shoddia's) is the very perfection 
of good taste and appropriateness, secretly laughs 
at every separate article of which it is composed, 
but particularly the bonnet. 

Be its form, fashion, color, what they may, the 
bonnet is quite sure to encounter ridicule at the 
hands of this remorseless critic. 

I never knew a bonnet to please a man yet. 

It is either too large, or too small, or too gaudy, 
or too plain. It is never exactly the thing, 
change it often as we will. 



50 ABOUT BONNETS. 

The writers Bcribble against it, the carica- 
turists ridicule it with their pencils, the wit makes 
a mot on it, the Reverend Mi*. Splurgeon de- 
nounces it from the pulpit. 

But suppose we were to practise a little of the, 
lex talionis in this vital manner. Suppose, for 
instance, we were to begin an indiscriminate 
warfare on trowsers in the abstract, or declare a 
state of siege against coats in the concrete. Sup- 
pose our animadversion extended to cravats, and 
we looked upon scarf-pins with the cold and 
pitiless eye of contempt or disgust. 

Suppose, when, in the lightness of his heart and 
the fulness of his purse, to-day he puts forth the 
trembling leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms in 
a pair of new boots, on the third day should come 
a frost, the killing frost of woman's disapproval, 
and then the man should fall, with the sad knowl- 
edge that, had he seiwed his God with half the 
zeal he served his tailor, He would not, in his age, 
have left him naked to his enemies. 

Women of America! our thraldom is too 
dreadful to be longer borne. TTe don't interfere 



ABOUT BONNETS. 51 

with men's clotldng : why should they torment ns 
about ours ? 

I call for mianimons action in this matter; 
and telling action, too. 

Let ns rise with one accordeon, and proudly tell 
the monster man that, by Crinoline! we won't 
stand any interference. 

Am I an insurrectionist? 

Then so be it. If, to defend my bonnet, 
I must become a sans culotte, I am ready to 
accept the position, though I insist on wearing 
my best dress to fight in. 

I am a sans cidotte enjujpons. 

This being, I believe, a new idea, perhaps 
there is a chance of my name being handed down 
to posterity after all. 

I hope posterity will take good care of my 
name, and above all not put it on the back of 
anybody's promissory note. 

I may add, that when I shuffle off this mortal 
coil I am not going to advertise my death in the 
weakly Snarler. 

You may call this " rambling " ; in which case 
I shall reply, with a scornful smile, that going 



52 ABOUT BOXXETS. 

off to that iindiscoTered country, fi'om wlios© 
bourne no traveller retm-ns, is a pretty long ram- 
ble, as I take it. 

And as you will take it some day. 

After wbicli, let us trust you will not adopt the 
ghost- walking " style " of the day, and come back 
to us in a Spiritual Photograph. 




JLBOUT GETTING PHOTOGRAPHED. 



KXETV the lieinous designs the man 
had on me; I knew that I should be 
called upon to endure the excruciating 
agony wliich awaits all those bleeding lambs who 
are mildly led to the sacrificial photographic 
altar. The long waiting, the fatigue of '' posing," 
the choice of attitudes, the anxiety about back 
hair, the effort to look pretty, always ending in 
the most ignominious failure. 

I knew this, and yet I went. 

But the truth is, ^h\ Soleil is a sophist. 

A soapist is 'Mi\ Soleil in the fullest sense of 
the word. 

He said if I woiJd only come to have my 
photograph taken, it would prove an immense 
advertisement for me. 



54 ABOUT GETTING PHOTOGRAPHED, 

He was right. 

It has advertised me as being a ponderous 
person, stern as to eyes, and simpering as to 
mouth; with more nose than brains, and more 
cheek than either. 

There are two varieties of photographic ex- 
pression. 

Kumber one, in which you endeavor to look 
cahn and intellectual, invariably "comes out" 
black as a thunder-cloud in the Eain of Terror. 
(One great blessing attendant upon this style is 
that it is never recognized, even by your most 
intimate friends, — a cii'cumstance which is rather 
trying if you happen with fatal blindness to be 
proud of the picture.) 

Number two, in which you are requested to 
" sit up," to look " lively," to " smile a little," re- 
presents you trying to do all these things at once, 
and failing at it ; but you finally succeed in dis- 
torting your features into a ghastly grin, which 
suggests the advisability of your immediate re- 
moval to a private Lunatic Asylum. 

Mr. Soleil said if I would only come to his 
place, he would send a carriage for me. 



ABOUT GETTING PEOTOGRAPHED. 65 

I couldn't resist this appeal, and, in fact, I 
wanted to be free to walk Broadway again in 
peace without meeting the sneering smile which 
ever attended me when I met Soleil senior, — 
the sneering smile which said with Hiawathan 
distinctness, — 

"You have broken us your promise, — 
Yes, your promise you have broken ; 
You have not come to be photo'ed, — 
To be photo'ed you have not come." 

Remembering this, I go. 

Painfully punctual as to hour, the carriage 
arrives. 

It is a very nice carriage, but knowing that it 
comes from the photographer, I experience a 
sense of chill and dampness on entering, which 
reminds me of the Tomb. 

l!^ot that I have as yet any personal knowledge 
of the peculiarities of the Tomb, but writers 
always allude to it as if they had a perfect under- 
standing of all that takes place there, and dis- 
approved of the " Dampness of the Tomb " on 
hygienic principles. 



56 ABOUT GETTING PHOTOGBAPHED. 

The dampness of the tomb-carriage is a sec- 
ondary feature, however, as the strong smell of 
tobacco-smoke strikes the senses first. The lin- 
gering fragrance of the last occupant, permeating 
the drab cushions, fastens itself in your clothes, 
which must subsequently be thoroughly aired for 
disinfecting pui-posesl 

This shows conclusively that air is a great 
thing. 

The tomb-carriage moves heavily along, and at 
length brings up at the gallery. 

Not exactly " up " at the gallery either. 

It would be a great boon to stair-suffering 
humanity if it were so ; but what carriage can 
mount a half a dozen flights of stairs ? — at least 
in safety. 

Mazeppa's may, but I am not a Mazeppa. 

Why is it that photographers are always such 
high old fellows ? 

. The stairs mounted, the ordeal of undressing 
and re-dressing gone through with, I present my- 
self to the " operator." 

" Operator ! " Indeed a fit name. I feel 
exactly as if I were a dead body, and were going 
to be dissected. 



ABOUT GETTING PHOTOGItAPHED. 57 

If tliey would only let me act like a dead 
body, and be photographed lying down with my 
eyes shut, how grateful I should be ! 

But no; I must sit up or stand up. I must 
place myself in a graceful (?) attitude. I am re- 
quested to " throw expression " in my face, and 
to do all manner of things which require exer- 
tioriy that bane of woman's existence. 

I don't know how it is, I never please opera- 
tors. 

If I look to the right, they desire me to look 
to the left. If I raise my eyes to what I con- 
sider the proper height, I am peremptorily di- 
rected to lower them, and fix them on a given 
point, — generally a card nailed in quite a differ- 
ent direction to the position my body has been 
placed in, which circumstance has the unpleasant 
effect of inducing a peculiar obliquity of vision. 

I do as I am bid, nevertheless, but meekly, 
mildly, sadly. 

At one stage of the proceedings, however, I 
generally prove a little rebellious. 

This is, when I am approached by that inquisi- 
torial instrument of torture sarcastically denomi- 
nated the " head-rest." 



58 ABOUT GETTING PHOTOGRAPHED. 

I long ago came to the conclusion that there is 
no head-rest for the wicked who come to get 
photographed. 

" Must I put my head in that thing ? " I ask, 
eying it as if I were a conspirator, tried and con- 
demned, and the thing in question were the 
noose which was about to assist me in shuffling 
off this mortal coil. 

I am relieved of this necessity by the operator, 
who puts it in for me, turns sundry screws, and 
removes himself to a convenient distance, to 
study the effect. 

" Am I all right ? " I ask, very tired and im- 
patient. 

The operator deigns no reply, birt, taking aim 
with his chemical-stained forefinger at the apex 
of my nose, begins moving the former slowly 
along in the regions of nowhere ; while the expe- 
rienced latter (which unfortunately nose all about 
the photograpliic gesture) follows with nasalating 
— I mean vacillating precision. 

Ten seconds pass — ten hundred thousand 
million billion seconds of agonizing quietude — 



ABOUT GETTING PHOTOGRAPHED. 59 

of dead-life — of non-existence — of self -eclipse 
(so to speak) and yonr photograph is taken. 

Generally yonr life is spared. 

Joyonsly now I prepare for departure; glee- 
fully I release myself from the head-rest, and 
cease my idiotic smiling at nothing. 

"With a light heart, I reach the door. 

There to be met by the returning operator, 
who, with a fiendish malignity, announces that it 
must all he done over again ! 

The first, which gave us both so much trouble, 
is a complete failure. 

In the language of nous autres, it is knocked 
into photographic pi. 

And it is quite evident that the chemical- 
stained digit, which he again raises ominously, 
has been a prominent finger in that pie. 

But, adding affront to persecution, the operator 
persists that /spoiled the picture. 

He says I " moved." 

If that's all the reward I get for standing as 
still as a mouse is popularly supposed to, for not 
daring to breathe, and for staring at nothing so 



CO ^BOUT GETTING PHOTOGRAPHED. 

persistingly that it gots all blurred, and makes 
my eyes water, I will move the next time. 

I'll have a physical 1st of May in full view of 
the camera. 

I'll execute the war dance of the Catawbas, 
with the oscura for my vis-a-vis. 

I'll do — a great many rash things. The 
rashest of which is to sit still again, and have my 
photograph done over : this time successfully. 

Successfully ! Heaven save the mark. I say 
nothing about the change in the coloring. The 
hair which is light coming out intensely black ; 
the eyes which are ditto coming out — done ; the 
complexion, that of a blonde, coming out dun- 
nest of all. 

However, thank my stars and the sun ! it is 
over. 

I don't have to pay anything, certainly, but 
under the circumstances I think I ought to be 
paid. 

The sale of these photograjDhs is immense, and 
is a source of handsome income to the Soleil 
genus. 

People buy cartes-de-visite of well-known per- 



ABOUT QBTTINQ PHOTO QBAPHED. 61 

sons for as many reasons as other people resort to 
the con^dvial tumbler. 

They buy them because they like us, because 
they dislike us, because they know us, because 
they don't know us, because they want to see how 
we look, because they want to see how we don't 
look, for this reason, for that reason, and for no 
reason whatever. 

The photograph market has many fluctuations. 

Let us play an engagement, successful or un- 
successful, let us write an article, clever or the 
reverse, let us pronounce a speech which pleases 
or which displeases, let us be maligned or lauded, 
scathed or flattered, and carte-de-visite stock goes 
up forthwith. 

But let us be ill for a short time, unable to use 
our pen either cuttingly or suavely ; let us get a 
sore throat, and be unfit for public speaking or 
playing ; let us be obliged, in common parlance, 
to keep our bed, — if we have any bed to keep ; 
let us lose step only for a few weeks in the on- 
ward march of the great army of men, and hey, 
presto ! we drop from the ranks, and are photo- 
graphically forgotten. 



62 ABOUT GETTING PHOTOGBAPHED. 

Ah ! if we are only considerate enough to die, 
— that is a different matter! Then everybody 
wants a photograph. 

Mr. Soleil would be in luck if he could only 
get hold of a " negative " of the beautiful face of 
the gentle genius who died yesterday in solitude 
and poverty. What a demand there would be 
for cartes-de-visite of the dead young poet ! 

While he lived, no photographer could have 
sold a hundred copies of his picture. 

And thus — and thus — and thus. 

Ovations to heroes, homage to greatness, the 
candied tongue licking absurd pomp, and crook- 
ing the pregnant hinges of the knee to what is 
prominent for the moment, the falsity of man, 
the hoUowness of wealth, all fade, — and, thank 
God for it ! they do fade, at last. 

In the world to come, let us pray heaven that 
foremost among the joys vouchsafed us may be 
complete, totaJ, entire, lasting oblivion of the 
mockeries of this. 

In some moods, it seems to me that life is 
indeed all a vain and wicked show, and I could 
wish that the heaven of glorious angels, tuning 



ABOUT GETTING PHOTOGRAPHED. 63 

harmonious harps, and clad in robes of light, 
might be a fancy of some dreamer only — the 
real heaven, the drab and simple paradise pic- 
tured by the Quakers. 




VI. 




ABOUT THE (RAKERS. 

O me, the Friends are most lovable 
people. Tlieir quiet presence acts like 
a soothing balm to my fretted spirit. 
Their life of nnusiial self-denial, their abstinence 
from lying, h}^ocrisy, sycophancy, and other 
hideous sins wliich are rife in that wicked hum- 
bug erroneously denominated the " best society," 
surround them with a halo of goodness and 
purity which I for one cannot choose but reve- 
rence. 

The shad-belly coats and poke bonnets, the 
utter drab and decency peculiar to the sect, are 
visible wherever you turn in Richmond, — not 
the Richmond our soldiers were " on " to during 
the war, but Richmond in the State of Indiana. 
In the streets, they are on every hand; at my 

(64) 



ABOUT TBE QUAKERS. 65 

lecture, the audience was thickly sprinkled with 
them. 

They yielded somewhat to the customs of the 
outer world while in my presence, it is true ; 
they took off their hats when I came upon the 
stage; they laughed as willingly as any when 
the laugh came in, and wiped their eyes with 
their handkerchiefs in the proper places; but 
their costume was of orthodox simplicity. 

Outsiders are apt to believe that the Quaker's 
dress was invented for them by some curious 
genius ; but this is altogether a mistake. At the 
time George Fox appeared and founded Qua- 
kerism, the present style of Friends' dress was 
worn by every^body. Those were the days of 
Cromwell and the Commonwealth. ISTo thought 
was given to the subject of dress until Cromwell's 
overthrow, when the Restoration brought in the 
piquant braveries of mincing fashion, which have 
gone on in unceasing change until this very 
hour. 

It was then that the voice of this sect, which 
strictly denounced the vanities of the world, was 
lifted to anathematize, as frivolous and wicked, 



66 ABOUT THE QUAKEMS. 

these fopperies of velvet and lace, and buckle 
and plume. The Cromwellian costume was con- 
tinued; and a strange glimpse of the past is 
afforded him who will but look, in thus observing 
men and women walking and breathing the air 
of to-day while wearing a style of dress which 
was extant in England in the era of the Pro- 
tector. Use has familiarized this curious sight ; 
but if we were to find another people wearing 
the di-ess of another age, — knee-breeches and 
queues, let us say, or puffs and fardengales, — 
how odd it would seem ! 

The Quaker use of "thee" and "thou" is 
founded on a sound principle, — that of being 
grammatically correct. Why the generality of 
ns should nse a plural pronoun to designate a 
single individual is not altogether clear. I have 
often had extreme difficulty in explaining this 
defective point to French people, who, although 
quite familiar with "vous" for "you," cannot 
comprehend the strange vagaries of a language 
which permits of no " thee-thouing " between 
lovers, parents and children, and husbands and 
wives. 



ABOUT THE QUAKERS. 67 

"And then you liave no thee-thon in your 
English ? " asked a Frenchman of me one day, in 
the last gasp of astonishment. 

" But, yes, they have," answered another, who 
was supposed to know English; "it is never 
used, however, by any bodies except the poets 
and the Quakkairs." 

This was conclusive. 

I attended "Quaker meeting" in Eichmond, 
and was much impressed by some unusually 
eloquent exliortations which fell from the lips of 
those persons whom the spirit had moved to utter 
them. 

These people shun the printing-press and the 
reporter's short-hand note-book, and thus much 
religious oratory of the best sort is lost to the 
world, while a great deal of trash is preserved for 
the followers of other sects to yawn over. 

Discreeter use of publicity would be wise in 
both cases. 

Ten years ago it was considered by the world 
at large a startling innovation on established 
custom for a woman to get up and address an 
audience. 



68 ABOUT THE QUAKERS. 

A woman-speaker was looked upon in tlie 
most obnoxious light; she was a " Bloomerite," 
she was " fast," she was that terrible piece of 
alliteration, a '^voman's-rights woman." In the 
extreme South, even at present, I doubt if lady- 
lecturers would be received with much favor. 

And those persons who first went to hear 
women speak from the lecturer's platform of 
our day fancied they were assisting at something 
novel under the moon and stars. 

Yet for two hundred plodding years before 
any of us were born, or, as my grandmother used 
loftily to say, " or thought of," women-speakers 
among the Friends had been lifting their voices 
on high, and exhorting their brethren and sisters 
to be good, and wise, and charitable. 

When we vote, which will be soon, mind you, 
we must not forget to render homage where 
homage is due, in recognizing that the sect of 
Friends first practically acknowledged the equal- 
ity of woman. 

It was a beautiful sunny Sunday in April. 
The air was odorous with spring balm, and the 
doors and windows of the meeting-house were 
open wide. 



ABOUT THE QUAKERS. 69 

In entering, the gentlemen passed in at the 
right, while 1 and my companion — a buxom 
Quaker lady, wife of a rich Quaker of Richmond 
— went in at the left. 

It was .a large room, with a high ceiling, bare 
walls, bare benches, a bare floor, with never a 
bare head. Every man wore his hat, every 
woman her bonnet. 

They sat in dead silence and in rows. 

Down the middle of the meeting-house, from 
front to back, ran a serviceable board fence, 
separating the hats from the bonnets. 

There was no pulpit, no gallery, no organ-loft, 
no place at all in which to "fiddle and sing." 
Where the pulpit generally is were a number of 
slightly raised seats, on which sat row after row 
of the very demurest Quakers, with the very 
deepest bonnets, and the very broadest-brimmed 
hats, — men one side, women the other. 

How I endured the long silence which ensued 
I hardly know. It was very trying to one of my 
disposition to sit so still. 

The silence had a marked effect on me, how- 
ever. There seemed to be three stages of feeling 
induced by it. 



70 ABOUT THE QUAKEMS. 

The first stage lasted througli the first ten 
minutes, and was simply a feeling of blank 
waiting. 

The second stage was comic in its character. 
I felt an almost irresistible impulse to create a 
sensation, by standing up on the bench where I 
sat, or by " starting the applause," with my feet, 
as the gallery gods do at the theatre, or some 
other act of desperately wicked levity. 

I fell to studying the stolid faces of the elders, 
and an insane fancy suddenly possessed me that 
one of them, who sat on the top row of benches, 
looked like Chanfrau, the comedian. 

Fancy Chanfrau with an ultra solemn face, in 
a Quaker hat, at a Quaker meeting ! 

Then another face struck me as a ludicrous 
imitation of that of McYicker, the Chicago man- 
ager, another comedian, and I could scarce 
keep from laughing outright. 

The third stage quickly followed. It was one 
of solemn awe. 

I have sat in the gorgeous and crumbling 
Cathedral of Notre Dame, in Paris, and listened 
to the impressive service of the Eoman Catholic 



ABOUT THE QUAKERS. 71 

Church, with its chanting priests, its wailing 
choir, its swinging clonds of incense ; but never 
fell there on my soul such a religious awe as that 
which now took possession of me, sitting in the 
profound stillness of this great, barren room. I 
seemed to feel the presence of the Holy Ghost, 
with vast shadowy wings, brooding over the voice- 
less assemblage. 

The stillness was broken by the voice of a 
woman, who softly arose from her seat opposite 
me, and took off her ponderous bonnet. 

Her face was meek and gentle, her cap was of 
the whiteness of snow, her hands were clasped 
before her. 

Few of the Friends looked at her ; they bent 
their eyes on the ground, and listened gravely. 
But I, with the deepest respect for her and for 
all, looked full at the woman-preacher. 

Her dress fell in soft folds about her erect 
foiTQ, her 'kerchief was crossed devoutly upon 
her pure breast. She began in a low tone; 
but as she went on, her voice grew loud, and 
fell into a musical cadence, whose simple pathos 



Y2 ABOUT THE QUAKERS, 

rolled wave upon wave of tenderness across my 
heart. 

With steadily iterating cresceTido and diminu- 
endo^ like a wail, like a prayer, this woman plead 
to the erring to turn from their evil ways and 
seek the paths of peace. Her pronunciation was 
pure, her command of language good, her flow 
of ideas lucid, — all to a degree that surprised me. 

Her voice died out at last in gradually falling 
notes, which let the overstrained feelings down 
to their common level, as a loving mother might 
lay her child gently down to sleep. 

The speaker sat down, and immediately put on 
her bonnet. 

I shall not conceal the truth, my eyes were 
filled with tears. All thought of the ludicrous in 
connection with these good people fled from me. 
I saw only their beautiful simplicity, calm fervor, 
perfect faith. 

Another space of silence broken by another 
woman's voice, and-, at the close of her remarks, 
a third voice — again a woman's — fell upon the 
serene stillness, — this time from behind me. 

No head was turned to look at her. 



ABOUT THE QUAKERS. 73 

Her voice came tremblingly, and sounded as if 
slie were shaken like a reed, with emotion. Her 
syllables dropped on^ by one : — 

" Be-lov-ed Friends, — may — these — words — 
sink deep into our hearts, — and bear — good 
fruit." 

Another long silence. The sun climbed around 
the wall, and, as if it would lend its golden glory 
to this quiet scene, streamed in at the broad win- 
dows. 

Presently one of the elders, a venerable man, 
arose and shook hands with him who sat next. 
Others followed the example thus set, and then 
the meeting was over. 

The separate sexes mingled at the side door as 
they passed out. But, instead of trooping 
promptly home, as other congregations do, they 
gathered about the gates, the pump, the meeting- 
house steps, shaking hands, exchanging cheery 
salutations, as our grandparents did, I have 
read, in the olden times. 

Introductions were made in the quaint Quaker 
style. There was no "Mr.," no "Mrs.," no 
" Miss." 

7 



74 ABOUT THE QUAKERS, 

" Olive ! " said a sweet voice, " this is John 
Hardy." 

" William Morehouse, thiasas Olive Logan." 

A white-haired gentle old lady, mother of a 
fine-looking middle-aged gentleman who w^as 
conversing wdth me, was introduced as " Eliza." 
Everybody so addressed her, — even the little 
children whose grandparents had been her play- 
mates nearly a century ago. 

The whole scene was a sweet and genial one, 
free from cold solemnity, and will linger long in 
my memory. 

I had pictured the Quakers in my mind as a 
severely sombre, solemn, sour, and altogether 
uncomfortable and dismal set of people. 

I found them to be full of the most beautiful 
and winning sweetness, kind, gentle, and even 
affectionate toward me, — who walked a personi- 
fication of that folly in attire which their reli- 
gious belief unsparingly denounces. 

Alas ! that it should ever be so. Separated in 

^ views, — separated in creeds, in customs, in beHef s 

of various sorts, — we ever find, when we meet, 

as men and women, that we are not so repugnant 

to each other as we had perhaps imagined. 



ABOUT THE QUAKERS. Y5 

I would that those who dwell at far extremes 
could come together on the common plane of 
humanity more often. It would modify and 
christianize much in both which now is stern 
and hating. 

The worthy actress, who loves virtue, honor, 
God, but whose idea of the Quaker and the puri- 
tan is drawn from the caricatures which disgrace 
so many otherwise excellent plays, would be 
astonished to find in the Quaker dame who takes 
her hand a gentle, true-hearted woman, w^orthy 
of her love and her respect, — not a canting 
Pharisee, with bitter whine and steeled heart. 

The woilhy Quaker lady, whose idea of all 
player-people is, that they serve the devil will- 
ingly, and carp at all that is pure, and good, and 
true, would be astonished to find that an actress 
may be worthy too, in spite of the vanities of the 
world which cling to her. 

Humanity is much the same in every sphere of 
life, and God alone knows how closely kin may 
be the hearts of two women whose daily lives are 
as wide apart as are the Quaker meeting and the 
Green-room. 



YII. 



ABOUT THE GREEN-ROOM. 



U 




OU are fresh from Eden," said Sir 
Charles Pomander to the innocent 
young wife of Ernest Yane, when she 
asked the meaning of that mysterious term, the 
green-room. " The green-room, my dear madam, 
is the bower where fairies put off their wings, and 
goddesses become dowdies ; where Lady Macbeth 
weeps over her lap-dog's indigestion, and Bel- 
yidera groans over the amount of her last milli- 
ner's bill. In a word, the green-room is the 
place where actors and actresses become mere 
men and women, and the name is no doubt 
derived from the general character of its unpro- 
fessional visitors." 

This was the English green-room in the days 
of Peg Woffington. 

(76) 



ABOUT THE GREEN-ROOM. 77 

An American green-room, like everything 
else American, lias peculiarities of its own ; and 
Peg "VYofiington's salle d"* audience differs as 
greatly from the green-room of Edwin Booth 
as the prim court of Victoria is in contrast with 
the profligate one of the Second Charles. 

The "unprofessional visitor" is a personage 
almost unknown in our native green-room, and 
for that reason that greatest of all charms, the 
charm of mystery, is thrown over the hallowed 
precinct where the bloodthirsty Lady Macbeth 
becomes human enough to weep over her lap- 
dog's indigestion, and Belvidera pays by personal 
annoyance, if not in current coin, for her too 
reckless indulgence in milliner's wares. 

That the name was derived from the habit of 
hanging this room with green is ob^dous. The 
reason for the selection of the color is equally 
obvious, and one which is still strong enough to 
cause its being chosen by the upholsterer for the 
study of his w^ealthy patron, green being the soft- 
est tint with which the student-eye is acquainted. 

Here, then, assemble the players to study, to 
laugh, to chat, to put the finishing touches to 



T3 ABOUT THE GnEEX-EOOM. 

what was begun in the dressing-room, to condole 
with each other, to be meriy, to be sad, to go 
through the thousand and one emotions which 
constitute life among plajei-s as among common ' 
folk. 

The rallving-crY which brings the actors to- 
gether 13 a small slip of paper, technically kuown 
as a " call," distributed every morning on which a 
rehearsal is to take place, by an himible function- 
ary who may have a cognomen of individuality, 
but who is never spoken of except as the " call- 
boy." 

He may be a call-man, but he is never so 
called. Like the garqon of the French restaurant, 
he retains his boyhood forever. 

On this paper or " call," the hour for rehearsal, 
the piece to be rehearsed, and the part to be 
performed by the actor who receives it are all 
clearly written out. 

Ten o'clock in the morning is the usual hour 
of rendezvous, and ten minutes' grace is given to 
allow for difference in timepieces ; any one com- 
ing later than that is subject to a fine. 

A set of rules, remarkable for their stringency, 



ABOUT THE GREEX-ROOM. 79 

printed and framed, and hanging in grim silence 
in a glass ease, is an inevitable ornament of every 
green-room. 

Another ornament, and one -vrhich, besides the 
immense looking-glass for general use, forms the 
only other decoration of the walls of the green- 
room, is a small, sqnare, green-lined, glass-covered 
box, called the '■' cast-case.'' Viewing the contents 
of this case, many a heart has beat high with am- 
bitions tlirob, many a breast felt the bitter chill 
of disappointment. From it the leading trage- 
dian learns whether he is to play lago or Othello, 
Hamlet, or the shadowy murdered father of the 
melancholy Dane. 

It tells the saucy chambermaid that she may 
put off cap and ribbons, and, by virtne of her 
singing powers, be permitted to don the conven- 
tional white muslin dress of the stage mad- 
woman, crown her disheveled hair with wisps of 
straw, and play Ophelia. 

But how if the leading tragedian is "' east" for 
some other part besides the '* leading " one ? What, 
after the arrogation of the part of Hamlet by the 
predatory " star'' is the leading part in Hamlet f 



80 ABOUT THE GREEN-ROOM. 

The manager, perhaps, leans toward the " ghost ;" 
the " leading man " yearns to disport himself as 
Laertes. Here, however, the "juvenile man" 
steps in, and strife begins. 

Bnt authority conquers in the green-room as 
elsewhere. The cast-case issues a fiat, against 
wliich there is no appeal. 

However, this does not prevent the uttering 
of appeals, nor the making of threats of instant 
departure, of leaving the theatre with the name 
of the offended party in the bill for the night 
(a gross contravention of stage-laws,) and other 
terrors. But the manager generally holds fii-m. 

At "Wallack's Theatre, not long ago, the com- 
edy of The Wonder was up in the cast-case, and 
Mrs. Iloey was cast for Donna Yiolante, the lead- 
ing "female" part. The representation of the 
piece was deferred, and the benefit season came 
on. Another member of the company, Miss 
Fanny Morant, said she regretted not being able 
to choose The Wonder for her benefit, as Donna 
Yiolante, of all comedy parts, was her favorite. 
In a pleasant spirit of camaraderie, Mrs. Iloey 
offered to relincpiish her right of playing this 



ABOUT THE GREE^'-BOOM. 81 

part, allowing Miss Morant to play it for her ben- 
efit. Mr. AYallack was consulted, and agreed to 
the arrangement. Some other obstacle occurred, 
however, preventing, the representation of the 
piece for Miss Morant's benefit, and The Woiuler 
was temporarily set aside, only, after a short 
lapse of time, to be replaced with the name of 
Miss Henriqiies as Donna Yiolante. 

Here was a blow! The leading lady could 
scarcely believe her eyes. Insolent cast-case ! 
If it were possible to believe that the inanimate 
object had of itself planned and executed this 
dire affi'ont, the lady would have believed it 
rather than suspect her long-time friend, her 
on-the-stage lover for ten years back. Manager 
Lester T^allack, of thus deposing her. Mrs. 
Iloey sought redi-ess, but found none. 

" You relinquished the part," said Mr. Wallack, 
with inimitably comj^laisant demeanor. 

" Yes," said the lady, " but only in favor of 
Miss Morant, and for one occasion, — her benefit. 
That part was mine by right. I am the leading 
lady." 

" That is mdisputable," Mr. Wallack admitted 



82 ABOUT TEE GREEN-BOOM, 

graciously. " You are tlie leading lady ; but you 
resigned the part, and, having resigned it, I am 
at liberty to give it to another." 

In vain Mrs. Iloey's remonstrances. Mr. Wal- 
lack was firm. 

" You will please accept the resignation which 
I now offer," said the leading lady at last, and 
"As you please, madam," returned the man- 
ager. 

So frequent are disputes of tliis character that 
an effort is now being made to do away with the 
offensive cast-case altogether, by keeping the 
players in ignorance of the cast until each is no- 
tified of the part he is required to play through 
the medium of the " call." 

This innovation finds no favor with actors ; for 
they are creatures of tradition, and such they will 
ever remain. 

It would be useless in me to ignore, however 
much I might wish to do so, the social prejudice 
which exists against the body theatrical. How 
ill-grounded, how much a matter of fashion is 
this prejudice ; how many good and worthy people 
find themselves both misunderstood and unappre- 



ABOUT THE GREEN-ROOM. 83 

ciated through its workings, perhaps none but 
one who has dwelt in the mimic world can deeply 
feel. 

Like injustice in all its forms, this prejudice is 
very inconsistent ; for, while the name of a poor 
" stock actress " is, with some people, almost a 
synonym for what is lax in the sex, those of Eis- 
tori and Charlotte Cushman (good and noble 
women in their way, and great artists without a 
doubt, but in point of moral worth not one whit 
superior to nine-tenths of other women of the 
theatre), are, by the same people, lauded and sung 
almost ad nauseum. 

But who can account for the prej iidices which 
are a matter of fashion ? 

Formerly much of the odium which now falls 
on the actress found its object in the milliner 
girls. To this day, both in London and Paris, 
something of this opprobrium still clings to the 
pretty onodiste. ^V'omen of severe principles, 
governed by popular prejudice, prefer any trade 
to that of bonnet-making. 

Absurd tyranny ! 

In the School for Scandal, it will be remem- 



84: ABOUT TEE QBEEN-BOOM. 

bered, the lady who was hidden behind the screen 
in Joseph Surface's room, is described by that 
hypocritical moralist as a " milliner ; " and the 
name is, of itself, snfficient to satisfy the good- 
natured Sir Peter that the person's character is 
none of the best. But, as it happens, the " petti- 
coat " which Sir Peter " vowed he saw " was Lady 
Teazle herself, and thus, as not unf requently hap- 
pens, the poor milliner who was not present 
shouldered the fault of the iine lady who was. 

It is rather extraordinary that in America, 
where we are supposed to have no aristocracy, 
the art of turning up the nose at struggling merit 
has reached a perfection elsewhere unknown. 

While Money-Grub, of Wall Street, would feel 
horrified if you were to propose bringing an 
actor to his house, we have 'only to refer to the 
chronicles of the different periods to find that 
Ben Jonson was distinguished by favors from 
James the First, King of England and Defender, 
of the Faith ; that another actor, one Shakespeare, 
was not despised by a queen of the same 
country and its dej)endencies — Elizabeth. 

The history of Great Britain is full of these 



ABOUT THE GREEN-ROOM. 85 

intimacies between court and stage. More than 
one coroneted head in England at the present 
day has worn the banble-jewels of the " mobled 
queen." 

Charles Mathews, travelling through Italy cheek 
by jowl with Lord and Lady Blessington and 
Count D'Orsay, could scarcely have been made to 
feel that his social status was much beneath that 
of liis titled companions ; for, on investigation, 
we find that the actor, — the merry, laughing 
"shoulder-slapping fellow," — was the real lion 
of the party, distinguished as it was. 

Sydney Lady Morgan was extremely proud of 
her father and mother, both players, and of their 
profession. She herself acted in her early youth ; 
but, by the production of the Wild Irish Girl, 
w^hen she gave e^ddence of that brilliant literary 
facility which entitles her to so prominent a place 
among English women of letters, we are led to 
believe that it would not be unjust to apply 
to her a criticism which a friend has passed on 
the waiter of this book, — that the pen was 
mightier than the comedienne. 

In France, where actresses often receive much 
8 



b6 ABOUT THE GREES-BOOM. 

ceiisnre, and often deserve it, a distinction is 
still made in favor of the good. Those green- 
room satellites who are without reproach may 
also be entirely without fear. 

Eose Cheri, a charming actress, whose early 
death all true lovers of the art must deplore, 
was welcome to any circle in Paris, however 
exclusive. 

Mademoiselle Delaporte, an ingenuous young 
creature connected with the Gymnase Theatre, is 
known and respected as a worthy and amiable 
girL 

Mile. Victoria, of the same theatre, received 
an ovation from the titled world of France on the 
night of her reappearanc-e after her marriage 
with an actor of the company. 

Belonging, root and branch, to a theatrical 
family, — bom, figuratively speaking, in the green- 
room, I have not on that account been deemed 
unworthy to break bread at an imperial table, 
nor to take the hand of friendship extended by 
an English lordly divine. 

My reader may perhaps feel like reminding 
me of certain celebrated players of great wealth 



ABOUT TEE GREEX-EOOM. 87 

and national fame, who have not felt social os- 
tracism in this country, and that their reception 
by the heau raoiide is a partial refutation of my 
strictures. 

I scarcely recognize that this is the case. 

It appears that we are no longer permitted t6 
use the old adage, that " exceptions prove the 
rule " ; nevertheless, when these solitary instances 
are strongly insisted upon, we can but feel that it 
would not be so much a matter of comment for 
a few actors to be well received, if it were not 
altogether customary to taboo tlie majority. 

I am making myself now the mouthpiece of a 
class of people ; its " shining lights," like the shin- 
ing lights of other classes, require no champion. 

But the point is here : it is not the good in 
whose favor distinctions are made in America, 
but tJie great. 

Players like those alluded to are quietly segre- 
gated from the ranks in which they belong, and 
the bulk of the profession remains under the so- 
cial ban. 

I hope yet to see the day when actors and ac- 
tresses shall be judged by their deserts, and when 



88 



ABOUT THE GBEEN-BOOM. 



it shall be no longer customary to make decent 
and worthy men and women share the odium 
which is cast upon the stage by the representa- 
tives of the naked, the indecent, or the Drunken 
Drama. 




yn. 



ABOUT THE DRUNKEN DRAMA. 




HE Drunken Drama has two branches. 
One branch is ilhistrated by the actor 
who represents drunlvcnness on the stage, 
as he might represent thievery, murder, or any 
other wickedness. The other branch is ilhis- 
trated by the actor who gets drunk. 

Not infrequently the two are combined, and 
Toodles on the stage is also Toodles in private. 
He may move us to laughter in the theatre, but 
we may be assured there will be others whom he 
will move to tears out of it. 

It was formerly more common than it is now 
to endeavor to make the drama subservient to the 
cause of temperance : such plays as The Drunh- 
ard and Ten Wights in a Bar-Room were used 
as a means of warning to young men. ISTow, the 
8* (89) 



90 ABOUT TEE DRUNKEN DRAMA. 

serious drunkard has gone out of fashion, and his 
place in the drama is occupied by such amusing 
sots as Toodles and Eccles. "Wlien the play of 
The Drunkard was first produced, it created a 
marked sensation. Its chief impersonator, a deli- 
cate young man of twenty-five, named Goodall, 
died of excessive drinking, and the piece expired 
with its great representative. 

Goodall was an extraordinary example of the 
preacher who fails to practise his own precepts. 
There may have been those who profited by his 
"fearful example," as nightly rendered to 
crowded houses. I have heard some very im- 
pressive stories to that effect, but never gave them 
much credit; but the actor himself was not 
warned. 

The personation was no mere mimicry with 
Goodall. He Jiimself had felt the anguish he 
so powerfully portrayed. 

But the bitterest comment on the influence of 
such representations remains in the fact, that 
although this unhappy young man refonned on 
the stage every night during a period of three 
years, he never extended his reformation into 
private life. 



ABOUT THE DRUNKEN DRAMA. 91 

They call this sort of play " the moral drama." 
The term is a ridiculons one, and one born of 
cant. 

Aside from its absurdity, it is an insult to 
every other class of dramatic production, and 
I can only wonder that any self-respecting 
manager should ever have adopted it. 

It implies that the drama proper is immoral. 
That position is one which should be left for the 
enemies of the theatre to assume. 

I have a sincere respect for genuine conductions, 
and a sincere contempt for narrow prejudice. It 
is to mere prejudice that the original inventor of 
the " moral drama " pandered ; and, by doing so, 
tacitly admitted that such prejudices were well 
founded. 

It is rather extraordinary, to one who looks for 
candor in oj)ponents of the stage, that they 
should take its abuses as a basis on which to f oi-m 
a judgment of the stage itself. I do not now 
recall any other branch of ai*t that is thus ill- 
treated. 

Not long ago, the novel was the sharer of the 
stage in this sort of denunciation, but it is so no 



92 ABOUT THE DRUNKEN DRAMA. 

longer. A distinction is made between the good 
and the bad, not alone among novels, but in 
novels ; and works which twenty years ago would 
have been eyed askance by many good people 
are now permitted to lie upon their family tables, 
and are read around the evening lamp. 

This is not because the novels have changed, 
but because the sentiment of the religious world 
has changed. 

Our mothers can remember when "Oliver 
Twist " and the " Pickwick Papers " were not 
deemed fit to be read in strictly guarded circles. 
To-day, the same circles — that is, the same style 
of people, with the same habits of morality and 
the same religious convictions — do not taboo 
even the works of that dreadful Mr. Thackeray, 
who has done for morality and honor so splendid 
a work. 

There are abuses, vices, wickednesses con- 
nected with the stage; but the stage is not an 
abuse, a vice, nor a wickedness. Its evils I am 
going to labor all my life, in my humble way, to 
try and right. But I am at the same time going 
to continue a defender of the drama, with voice 
and pen, always and everywhere. 



ABOUT THE DBUNKEN DRAMA, 93 

There has been a deal of stupid talk in this 
world about the "warning influence" of plays 
which hold the mirror up to vice. This also is 
born of cant. 

We have heard of thievishly-inclined appren- 
tices being " warned " from putting their fingers 
into their employer's cash-box by witnessing the 
career of George Barnwell. We have been told 
of terrible creatures, who were ripe for murder, 
being so horror-stricken over the woes of Macbeth 
that they immediately put on a clean shirt and 
joined the church. 

All stufe ! 

I contend that it is just here we may all look 
for the worst influence of the play-house. The 
" leg-business " is trivial in comparison with the 
" moral drama," so far as its bad influence upon 
auditors is concerned. 

These horrible representations of vice ought to 
be banished the stage. Those people are wholly 
in error who believe their influence to be benefi- 
cial. The same people believe that the spectacle 
of a murderer murdered by the lawn's hand, 
dangling hideously between earth and sky at a 



94 ABOUT THE DRUNKEN DRAMA. 

rope's end, is a useful one to the spectators ; and 
that the column-length printing of the records 
of crime in the newspapers, in prurient detail, 
exerts a moral influence. 

These things are horrible and pernicious in 
their influence. The stage should be swept of 
them. 

The influence of the stage on morality is a 
clear one, but the censors do not seem to know 
wherein it lies. Nobody goes to the theatre to 
be preached to. The prime object of the theatre 
is to entertain, and it is for the purpose of being 
entertained that people go there. 

The first aim of even the " moral drama " is to 
entertain ; and, if it fail in that, nobody will go 
to see it. 

But by making the amusement pure and beau- 
tiful in itself, the theatre insensibly exerts a good 
influence. 

It is not necessary to preach morality, but to 
exhibit amusing, refining, and agreeable phases of 
life — real life — that we may not be disgusted 
with human nature. 

The dramatist who goes out of his way to 



ABOUT THE DRUNKEN DRAMA, 95 

inculcate a moral does an unprofitable thing. 
It is the tone that runs through a play which 
renders it beneficial. , 

It stirs to laughter, or sympathetic teal's. It 
touches the chords of sweet emotions in the spec- 
tators. When it curdles their blood with horror, 
makes them shiver, it is as pernicious and hateful 
as when it directly panders to vice. 

These opinions are only the result of careful 
and thoughtful observation, not of any philo- 
sophic theory. I am neither pliilosopher nor 
moralist; but, like Mr. Emerson, I can "say 
what I see." I can not prove myself right, in 
any logical and altogether crushing way. But, 
womanlike, I can ask a question, and I will :— 

Who most love the so-called " moral drama " ? 
The Bowery boys. 

Who cheer the loudest at a melodramatic and 
high-sounding moral "gag" from an actor's 
tongue? The little rascals of the Old Bowery 
pit, who would pick your pocket without a 
scruple. 

" Ha-a-a, villun ! " roars the gallant young sailor 
in immaculate white trowsers and kid slippers, 



96 ABOUT THE DBUSKES DRAMA. 

"I have unmasked ve I Be£:one, villun! and 
know — aha ! — that he who would lie to his wife 
would not hesuttate to rob a bank of millions ! " 

And "hi! hi!" shout the dirty httle gallery 
gods. They like it ; it suits their ideas exactly ; 
but be careful they do not get too near you when 
you are leaving the theatre, or your pocketbook 
may change owners. 

Go to some profounder metaphysician than 
I am for an explanation of why this is so. But 
rest assured that it is so. If there be any excep- 
tions to prove the rule, I hope you know of them. 
I do not. 

But while the "moral" drunken drama is 
hurtful in an indirect and not easily explainable 
way, the representation of drimkenness in its 
comic aspect is hurtful in an equal, perhaps a 
greater degree, and in a way that is quite com- 
prehensible. 

Man is a monkey in his penchant for imitation, 
and he especially loves to imitate that which is 
fimny. The boys at the circus go home and 
imitate the clown, mimic his antics, retail his 



ABOUT THE DRUNKEN DBA^TA. 97 

jokes ; and, if tliey arouse a laugh thereby, are 
elated with their success. They miirdc Toodles 
and Eccles in the same way. 

Men — who are but grown-up boys — are in- 
spired by the same spirit. They get a great idea 
of the humorous aspect of drunkenness, and they 
do not shrink from exhibiting it in their own 
persons to a choice circle of their fellows. They 
get drunk over dinners at Delmonico's, and mock 
Toodles in a way that makes their companions, 
themselves a little drunk also, laugh uproai'iously. 

They go into bar-rooms, slap each other hila- 
riously on the back, jam their hats on the backs 
of their heads, and mock old Eccles. 

Spectatoi*s and amateur performers are here 
under the influence of the same baneful tliuig — 
the idea that Eccles and Toodles are fimny off 
the stage as well as on. 

And so they are; and the dmnkard off the 
stage sometimes provokes the spirit of imitation 
too, no doubt. There are all sorts of pernicious 
influences at work in the world. I would keep 
them out of all literature, whether in novels or 
in plays. 

9 



98 ABOUT THE DRUNKEN DRAMA. 

Of course the most deplorable branch of the 
drunken drama is that wliich is illustrated by the 
actor who gets drunk. 

The most vicious feature of this branch, 
strangely enough, is often presented by the 
audience. 

No theatre-goer can have failed to note the 
bad influence the audience sometimes exerts in 
its manner of treating the actor who is addicted 
to liquor in private life. His vice really seems in 
some mysterious way to make him a favorite. 
Instances of this are painfully abundant. 

An actor, now in the height of his popularity, 
who is known to be sadly intemperate, finds 
himself greeted by enthusiastic applause when- 
ever he has occasion, in his assumed character, 
to allude to drinldng in a humorous way. 

Eight or ten years ago, in a Western town, my 

sister was one night summoned to play in the 

Lady of Lyons. The house was all sold, a large 

and fashionable audience was gathered, and 

^ expectation was on tiptoe. 

Eight o'clock arrived; the curtain remained 
down; the audience became impatient. There 



ABOUT TEE DRUNKEN DRAMA. 99 

was trouble behind the scenes. 'Eo Claude Mel- 
notte was to be found. The actor above alluded 
to was cast for the part, but he had not come. 

" Where can he be ? " was anxiously asked by 
Pauline. " Oh, I know where to find him," re- 
plied the manager. " Johnny will be sure to be 
at the faro-table, and drmik." 

His words were verified. " Johnny " was at the 
faro-table, — and drunk. By some subtle system 
of telegraphy, the audience became aware of this 
fact ; but, so far from being indignant at it, when 
the greatly-belated Johnny at length stepped on 
the stage, his appearance was the signal for a 
burst of enthusiastic approbatory yells, which 
changed into decided applause when Johnny 
thickly stumbled over the first speech of Bul- 
wer's hero. 

Johnny has manfully sustained his reputation 
for faro-playing and drunkenness during the past 
ten years, and it was only the other night that 
I heard him enthusiastically sustained by ap- 
plause when he announced that the wine-cup was 
a trinket with which he was quite at home — or 
words to that effect. 



100 ABOUT THE DRUSKEX DRAMA. 

Johnny is still young, handsome, graceful, and 
of such decided talent for dramatic art that he 
occasionally trenches on actual genius. It is 
very sad to see his leaning to drink, but it is 
even sadder to see how his audiences encourage 
him in it. 

Another example of this kind was furnished 
by a well-known actor who died recently in a 
distant State. He was the most charming Homeo 
I ever saw ; and, when he chose to vary, where 
so delightful a Mercutio as he ? Frequently he 
addressed the audience when very drunk. 

I remember on one occasion, in Philadelphia, 
his coming down to the footlights and sa^'ing, — 
'• Ladies and gentlemen, d'ye see that man \ He 
ought f be pardoned. I, being the Duke, ought 
f pardon him, but our property-man is sv^ch a 
drunkard that he hasn't put one speck of pardon 
on the table.'' 

If this speech had been hissed, it might have 
been a rebuke strong enough to bring about the 
reformation of the unfortunate actor (for there 
was never a man so apprehensive of the displea- 
sure of an audience; ; but, on the contrary, it 



ABOUT THE BRUWKEy DRAMA. 101 • 

seemed to afford iinivei-sal amusement and grati- 
fication. 

Few of my readers are ignorant of the fa<rt 
that the elder Booth, whose like we shall not see 
again, was often intoxicated while playing. 
Strangely enough, his artistic powers were as 
strong when he was in that state as when he was 
quite sober. Many aver that his sober Eichard 
was a tame and puerile thing compared to the 
noisy Gloster of perhaps a hundred cups. 

It seems, however, scarcely necessaiy to add 
that when in this state Booth's brain was no 
clearer than that of another man who is intoxi- 
cated ; and, though he managed to give his grand 
"points'' with perhaps even greater force than 
when he was sober, he efFectually ruined the play 
for all the other performers, and in the main, 
for the audience. 

When I was a little girl, Booth was once play- 
ing, in conjunction with my sister, in Memphis, 
and she sent me one night to deliver some 
message to him on the stage. 

The curtain had not yet risen, but I found Mr. 
Booth standing at the back of the stage, inside 
9* 



102 ABOUT THE DRUNKEN DRAMA. 

the tomb of the Capulets, f or the nonce unoccu- 
pied by any defunct member of that illustrious 
house. , 

I approached timidly, and delivered my mes- 
sage; whereupon, starting up with the graceful 
spring of a tiger disturbed, he hissed out, — 

*' Avaunt, and quit my sight ! Let the earth hide thee 1 
Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold ; 
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes 
Whicli thou dost glare with ! " 

Any one who has seen Booth, and remembers 
the terrible intensity of his voice, the wonderful 
crescendo which he placed on the word gla-a-are ! 
in this sentence, will not be surprised to learn 
that a weak, sickly little girl, as I was, should 
have toppled straight over in a dead swoon at 
hearing it so unexpectedly and unjustly ad- 
dressed to herself, in the semi-darkness of the 
Capulet tomb. 

It is needless to say that the great tragedian 
was intoxicated. 

On this occasion, after I had been discovered, 
and a couch had been extemporized for me in my 



ABOUT THE DRimKEN DRAMA. 103 

sister's dressing-room, I remember hearing such 
peals on peals of applause for liis acting that 
I lay there in an agonized fear that he would add 
further to my distresses by playing so well that 
the audience would tear the house down in their 
enthusiasm. 

The next time I saw Booth he was playing 
with Miss Davenport (Mrs. Lander). The piece 
was The Apostate, and on this occasion I formed 
one of the audience. 

The reader who is familiar with this play will 
remember where Alvarez gives Florinda to 
Hemeya, who, recei\dng her with applause, 
exclaims, "Who now shall part us?" 

At this moment on strode the terrible Pescara, 
and roared the one word, " I ! " 

Booth was intoxicated again ! And his whole 
bearing so reminded me of the previous occasion 
when he had given me a fright from which I had 
not yet fully recovered, that, forgetting decorum 
and everything else, I started up from my seat 
and rushed pell-mell out of the theatre. 

On several occasions I saw Edwin Booth, a tall, 
slender boy, who seemed all eyes, standing behind 



104 ABOUT THE DRUXKEN DRAMA. 

the scenes intently watcliing his father's perform- 
ances, and I remember wondering if the little 
boy's father ever frightened him as he had 
frightened me. 

BQssing in theatres is no longer practised in 
this country, save in the rarest instances. There 
are other modes of expressing disapproval which 
are quite as effectual, perhaps, and it is not 
desirable that hissing should be resorted to, 
except in case of^the gravest offence. 

Such offence, I think, is afforded by the actor 
who appears drunk on the stage. It is an insult 
to his audience, and the audience has a right to 
resent it as such. 

I doubt if there be an actor living who would 
not become speedily cured of this vice if the 
audience took that course with him. The cure 
might not extend to private life, it is true ; but 
that, so far as the interests of art are concerned, 
is a secondary consideration. 

I know no reason why an 2iCtoY^s private vices 
should be taken in hand by the public in any 
way that they would not be if he were not an 
actor. It is solely in the interests of art that 



ABOUT THE DBU2TKE^ DRAMA. 105 

I am writing now; and art requires that its 
devotees should not put an enemy in their 
mouths to steal away their brains. 



I wonder if there be any one among the cen- 
surers of the stage who will find in the drunken- 
ness of occasional actors another proof of the 
wickedness of the whole profession? 

I wonder if it will be argued that this article is 
a concession to the prejudices of these worthy 
people, and an argument ready-made for their 
use? 

Perhaps I ought not to wonder, but to take it 
for granted that such a course of reasoning will 
be adopted. Even more untenable positions than 
this are continually taken. In fact, the only 
ground the opponent of the theatre can walk on 
is found in the faults that are connected with it 
— faults which no one deplores more heartily 
than I do. I admit that some actors drink — 
ergo, " actors are a dreadful set of people." 

But do not some orators di'ink 1 I once saw 
a Fourth of July orator so tipsy that he could 



106 ABOUT THE DBUWKEJST BMAMA, 

hardly stand straight while he mumbled his 
oration. 

I know of a celebrated lecturer and college 
professor who has a glass of liquor on the desk 
before him, and never lectures except in a condi- 
tion of mild intoxication. 

Do you therefore pronounce oratory a wicked- 
ness, and orators a " dreadful set " ? 

Do not literary men drink ? I have heard, it 
seems to me, of Bohemians who were in that 
habit, who yet did not succeed in casting a stigma 
on all literature by their vice, — whose books are 
read in the purest circles, and noticed favorably 
in the most rigid journals. 

Do not statesmen drink? The annals of 
statesmanship present many dreadful examples 
of brilliant intellects besotted by liquor, and of 
mediocre men tipsy in high office. Do you con- 
clemn statesmanship therefore ? 

Do not hod-carriers drink ? Do you condemn 
hod-carrying therefore ? 

If I could always as easily foresee the position 
the learned gentleman on the other side would 
take, I should be glad ; but his positions are often 



ABOUT THE DRUNKEIf DRAMA. 107 

SO mucli more nutenable than this that it seems a 
waste of energy to answer £liem at all. 

I claim for actors and actresses in private life 
precisely what is claimed for men and women in 
every other calling, — that they shall be esteemed 
according to their merits as men and Avomen. If 
they are virtuous and honorable, their virtue and 
honor should be recognized, approved, and en- 
couraged, even by those who disapprove of their 
calling. 

The concert-singer, the professional pianist — 
all, in fact, who live by music, exist in an atmos- 
phere precisely like that of the actor, but they do 
not share his odium in the eyes of Mrs. Grundy. 

I repeat that the claim is for consideration of 
private merit or demerit, without regard to occu- 
pation. 

An actor who leads a correct life is desendns: 
of the same good name, and the same social re- 
cognition, as the painter who does the same. 

An actress who leads an immoral life is by no 
just man to be held up as a proof that the drama 
is immoral, any more than a poetess who does the 
same is to cast a stigma upon all poesy. 



108 ABOUT THE DRUNKEN DRAMA. 

'^ Of all classes," says the Amerioaii Oydqpcp.- 
dia, " tliey (actors and actresses) are tlie freest 
from crime." For an actor to figure in a crim- 
inal trial, or to inhabit a prison, always has been 
a thing so rare that it is observed and commented 
on in the same marked manner as crimes amons: 
clergymen are. 

Where crime is rare, it is a sign of the excel- 
lence of the class. 

Intemperance is generally the worst vice these 
people have ; and all the other f eatnres of vice are 
so little known among them that this one stands 
out with undue prominence, and is universally 
exaggerated and overdrawn. 

While I deplore its existence, too, I deny that 
it prevails to the extent commonly claimed, and 
I assert that it prevails to a greater extent among 
the people who arrogate to themselves the title of 
" our best society." 

I speak of what I know, and not as one who 
has simply heard from an outside place. I have 
moved in the " highest circles," and I have moved 
in theatrical circles, and IJcnow. 

If it were not a course altogether too contempt- 



ABOUT THE DRUNKEN DRAMA. 109 

ible for my self-respect to approve of, 1 conld 
unmask the private lives of many who are re- 
ceived freely in the " highest circles," and show 
that they furnish a parallel to the very worst lives 
of players, — even extending the sphere of the 
player, for the nonce, so that it shall include 
those indecent women who disgrace our dramatic 
temples with the orgies of the Leg Business. 




IX. 



ABOUT THE LEG BUSINESS. 




WO classes of "female" performers are 
associated with the " naked drama/' as it 
has been called. The first are a legi ti- 
mate branch of the theatrical profession, and in 
their way may be, and often are, artists. They 
are the ballet-dancers. 

The theatre as legitimately deals in music and 
dancing as it does in tragedy or comedy. Hence, 
the ballet is, and always has been, as freely recog- 
nized by the most cultured people (when they ap- 
prove of the theatre at all) as any other feature 
of the mimic world. 

For the dancers of the legitimate ballet, I — 
who know them as a class well — have some re- 
spect. They are for the most part a hard-work- 
ing, ill-paid body of women, not infrequently the 

(110) 



ABOUT THE LEG BUSINESS. Ill 

Bole support of entire families, and their moral 
characters are not one wliit affected by their line 
of business. 

The admiring public which sees the pretty pic- 
ture they make on the stage little knows the 
physical fatigue which these poor girls encounter 
in return for a few dollars a week salary from 
the manager, and an illiberal judgment at the 
hands of the audience. 

Few men work so hard as the ballet-girl — 
the coryphee, who, by half-past eight in the 
morning, is at the theatre, clad in gauze and silk 
webbing, practising pirouettes, entrechats, the 
toe-torture, and other inquisitorial exercises. 

I have seen these girls practise from nine 
o'clock in the morning until half -past twelve, al- 
most without cessation ; then take a hurried lunch, 
sometimes eating it while standing shivering in 
their thin clothing in a draughty space behind 
the " flats," only to begin their labor again at 
half -past one, and so continue till ^yq. 

This is for the matinee performance ; at half- 
past seven that of the night commences, finishing 
perhaps at eleven. 



112 ABOUT THE LEG BUSINESS. 

Then comes undressing, re-dressing, folding 
and laying a^vay their stage paraphernalia ; for, 
even if not naturally tidy (and tidiness is the rule 
with them, the exceptions rare) these girls 
must, for economy's sake, be careful of their 
clothing. 

And so, long after midnight, the tired crea- 
tures, often laden with heavy bundles, creep list- 
lessly into street cars, to be stared at by rude 
men, or, still worse, drag home through the de- 
serted streets, alone and unprotected, at risk of 
being mistaken for traviatas of the lowest grade. 

With the dancer who has passed the chrysalis 
ballet-girl stage, and is now a full fledged butter- 
fly ^r^TTi^'^^^, with her name large-lettered in the 
bills, and her engagement-papers stamped and 
signed at the lawyer's, the road is not so stony. 

I am far from placing the ballet-girl in the 
same rank with an intellectual player ; but there 
are grades of quality in all fields. She is a dan- 
cer, and loves dancing as an art. That pose into 
which she now throws herself with such abandon 
is not a vile pandering to the taste of those gig- 
gling men in the orchestra-stalls, but is an effort 



ABOUT THE LEG BUSINESS. 113 

which, to her idea, is as loving a tribute to a be- 
loved art as a painter's dearest pencil-touch is to 
him. " 

I have seen these women burst into tears on 
leaving the stage because they had observed men 
laughing among themselves, rolling their eyes 
about, and e^ddently making unworthy comments 
on the pretty creature before them, whose whole 
heart was for the hour lovingly given over to 
Terpsichore. 

" It is they who are bad," said Mademoiselle B. 
to me the other night ; " it is not we." 

Those men who have impure thoughts are the 
persons on whom censure should fall, not upon 
the devotees of an art which the dancers love, and 
embody to the best of their ability, and without 
any more idea of impurity because of the dress, 
which is both the conventional and the only prac- 
ticable one, than sculptors or painters have when 
they use the female figure as a medium to 
convey their ideas of poetry to the outside 
world. 

But there is one set of exponents of the 
10* 



114 ABOUT THE LEG BUSINESS. 

"naked drama" on whom I am for lamiching 
every possible invective of censure and reproach. 

I mean those women who are " neither fish, 
flesh, nor fowl " of the theatrical creation, — who 
are neither -actresses, pantomimists, nor ballet- 
girls, but who enjoy a celebrity more widely 
spread than many legitimate artists could hope to 
attain. 

It is unpleasant to mention names ; it is disa- 
greeable and even dangerous to do so ; but when 
such women as Cora Pearl, Yestvali, ' Menken, 
and their like were insolent enough to invade 
the stage, and involve in the obloquy which 
falls on them hundreds of good and pure women, 
it was time for even the most tolerant critic to 
express disaj)probation. 

Whatever the private character of these women 
might be, — however good, however bad, — we 
were justified, from their public exhibitions, in 
denouncing them as sliameless and unworthy. 

It is true, they made more money than any 
other class of " performers ;" more money than 
the poetic Edwin Booth ; infinitely more than the 
intellectual E. L. Davenport. 



ABOUT THE LEG BUSmESS. 115 

Stifle conscience, honor, and decency, and mere 
money-making is easy work, as these "svomen and 
others who have come later fully illustrate. 

In this chapter, whose main facts were set 
down before the fever for "blonde burlesque" 
raged in our theatres, I treat principally of a 
style of performance which the above-named 
women illustrate, and which is already fluttering 
in the last agonies of death. But so long as it 
lives, however sickly, my denunciation of the 
women who illustrate it has " excuse for being." 
These women are not devotees of any art. ^ith 
the exception of Yestvali — a failure on every 
lyric stage, both in Em-ope and America, — they 
do not either act, dance, sing, or mime ; but they 
habit themselves in a way which is attractive to 
an indelicate taste, and their inefficiency in other 
resrards is overlooked. 

Some of these women, strange as it may seem, 
have occasional aspirations for higher things. 

A play which I prepared for the stage in the 
year 186- had for its heroine a woman of tender 
feelings, holy passions, such as every author loves 
to paint. 



116 ABOUT THE LEG BUSINESS. 

After its production at one of the theatres in 
Broadway, I had many applicants for the 
purchase of co]Dies. Among these applicants 
was a person whose name is thoroughly asso- 
ciated with the Mazeppa, Dick Turpin, Jack 
Sheppard scliool, and none other. 

I was astonished that such a woman could 
covet such a part. What s}Tiipathy had the 
" French spy " with a heroine, tearful, suffering, 
and self-denying? What was the chastening 
influence of anguish and repentance to Jack 
Sheppard and his jolly pals who "fake away" so 
obstreperously in the burden of the chorus, and 
the pockets of the unwary ? 

I could not help expressing, my astonishment 
at this seeming inconsistency to a person who 
was acquainted with my applicant, for I was 
not. 

"Well, you see," he replied, referring to her 
familiarly, by her petit Qiom, " Leo hates the leg 
business as much as anybody; but, bless you, 
nothing else pays nowadays, — so what can she 
do?" 



j ABOUT THE LEG BUSmESS. IIY 

I The leg business is a business which requires 
; legs. 

I That these should be naturally symmetrical is 

( desirable, but not indispensable; for the art of 

• padding has reached such perfection, that nature 

i has been almost distanced, and stands, blushing 

! at her own incompetency, in the background. 

I^ew York can boast some artistic " padders ; " 

and, if you are curious to know where they dwell, 

I what their prices are, etc., you can go to almost 

any green-room of this period, and find their 

business cards stuck about in the frames of the 

looking-glasses, in the joints of the gas-burners, 

and sometimes lying on the top of the sacred 

cast-case itself. 

Strange to say, however, that Holy of Holies, 
the city of Philadelphia, bears off the pahn in 
the pad-making art. Thus the New Jersey rail- 
roads are frequently enriched by the precious 
freight of penitential Mazeppas, going on pil- 
grimages to the padding Mecca. 

It is generally supposed^ — by those who 
suppose anything at all on the subject — that 



118 ABOUT THE LEG BUSINESS. 

padding is employed only in the enlarging and 
beautifying of the calf of the leg, but this is a 
mistake. 

Such little inaccuracies as knock-knees, and 
bow-legs — trifling errata in Nature's original 
edition, remarkable .for their frequency in the 
human family, and especially in those misguided 
members of it who have rashly chosen the stage 
as a profession — are nimbly rectified by the pad- 
professor. 

I saw a letter from one of these the other day, 
which may be worth producing here for the sake 
of its ludicrousness. That it is a genuine docu- 
ment, I pledge my word. It ran thus, — 

" PniLADELFIA. 

" Mai^i : — Them tites is finished your nees will 
be all O K when you get them on. Bad figgers 
is all plaid out now they will caust 9 dollers." 

It would seem that the nine dollars capital, a 
couple of yards of white muslin, and the outer 
" tites," are all that is required of the followers 
of the Mazeppa school. 

Of personal beauty, they have often little; 



ABOUT THE LEG BUSINESS. 119 

of intellectuality, of compreliension, of grace, 
genius, poetry, less ; and of talent, none. 

"When the part they portray calls for the 
speaking of words, we lift our hands in blank 
astonishment that any creature with audacity 
enough to assume such a position can have so 
little ability to fill it. 

The money the Mazeppas make is something 
quite astonishing. Ten thousand dollars " share " 
for a month's engagement was paid but a short 
time ago to one of the most attractive of the 
" French spies." In less than two months after, 
she was obliged to borrow money to pay her 
hotel bill. 

"Easy come, easy go," is a proverb which 
must have been made for these women. 

It is not strange, perhaps, that they should 
have implicit faith in the potency of King Green- 
back, and offer him with little delicacy, to gain 
that always-desired end, — flattering comments in 
the newspapers. 

I have an editorial friend, of an extremely 
conscientious turn of mind, who was coolly asked 



120 ABOUT THE LEG BUSINESS, 

by a Mazeppa if lie would not take up the 
cudgels of criticism for her, as against another 
local paper, at the same time drawing from her 
pocket an immense roll of bills, and asking him 
to "take what he wanted." lie complied with 
her request ; for he wanted nothing that savored 
of bribery, and he took " what he wanted." 

There are those who understand rather better 
the delicate art of administering the critic- 
douceur. 

One such, on coming to New York for the first 
time, hearing that to mollify Muggins was indis- 
pensable to her success, sat down, after much 
deliberation, and mailed liim a black letter, or 
blackmailed him a white letter, inclosing a fifty- 
dollar bill, and a transparent cloak for bribery in 
the shape of a request that he would send her 
one stanza of a song of his own brilliant compo- 
sition (he having never written a line of verse in 
his life), leaving the s»ubject, air, metre and sen- 
timent open to his discriminating judgment. 

The fifty-dollar bill was never heard of more ; 
but the four lines of tender thought which 
follow were sent to her address, — 



ABOUT THE LEO BUSINESS. 121 

Am. — '■'■ IJcnow a hank'''' (note.) 
Come, love, come, where the roses blow, 
And the angels tune their radiant hair, 
"Where the zephyrs sigh to the far-off zones, 
And the sleoi^ing seas swell on the air. 

How's that? 

If the stage could but be rid of the " leg busi- 
ness " scourge, there is no reason why it should 
not form a worthy channel for gifted, intelligent, 
and virtuous young women to gain a livelihood 
through. But in its present condition — overrun 
as it is by troops of immodest women — there is, 
alas! but little encouragement to any woman 
who respects herself to turn to the stage for 
support. 

Openings for women are few enough, as gov- 
ernesses, and schoolmistresses, and shirtmakers, 
and hoopskirt drudges, generally, will testify. 

But worse slavery than any or all of these is 

the thraldom of waitinor to be married to have 

one's board and lodging paid. 

, A woman should have her destiny in her own 

hands as completely as a man has his, and the 

first boon that should be vouchsafed her is the 
11 



122 



ABOUT THE LEG BUSINESS. 



happy knowledge that, before she lies down at 
night, she may really thank her Maker, and not 
her husband, for having given her this day her 
daily bread. ' 




X. 



ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES, 



* * Nude. Bare. ' ' — Webster, 

"Bare. Wanting clothes, or ill-supplied with gar- 
ments." — JoTinson. 




?HEEE were always great evils attaching to 

the theatrical profession. I have always 

deplored them deeply. Some of them 

I have touched upon in the preceding chapters. 

No one who has read my articles, or listened to 

my lectures, will say that I have not earnestly 

defended the theatrical profession, — as such. 

I have also said, honestly, how I loathe the evils 

which attach to it. In this feeling of loathing, 

I have expressed the sentiments of a large class 

of people who were, like myself, bred to the 

stage, but who could not shut their eyes to the 

evils referred to. 

(123) 



124: ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATBE8. 

Within a few years, these evils had grown to 
appalling dimensions. Decency and virtue had 
been crowded from the ranks by indecency and 
licentiousness. A coarse rage for nudity had 
spread in our theatres, until it had come to be 
the ruling force in them. 

Seeing this truth, I shuddered at it. Seeing 
its effects, I mourned over them. In ever^^ place 
where I spoke of the stage, I denounced this 
encroaching shame; but I always coupled with 
denunciation of it defence of the drama. 

At the Woman's Suffras^e Convention in New 
York, in May, 1869, I denounced this thing 
again ; but, as I was not speaking at length upon 
this subject, but only touched upon it in passing, 
and by way of illustration, I did not, as usual, 
defend the drama. 

At once, there rose so wild a yell, as all the 
fiends from heaven that fell were furious at my 
course. 

Certain portions of the press attacked me, and 
accused me of slandering the profession to which 
I once belonged. Anonymous letters poured in 
upon me at the office of the Authors' Union in a 



ABOUT NUDITY m THEATRES. 125 

sort of flood, villifying me, upbraiding me, cover- 
ing me with coai-se and gross revilings. 

1 was asked to explain such base conduct. It 
was demanded that I should take back my rash 
and reckless statements. I was requested to re- 
member that I had once been very glad to think 
well of the theatrical profession. How dared 
I say I could advise no honorable woman to turn 
to the stage for support ? 

In a word, I was put upon my defence. 

Turning the matter over in my mind care- 
fully, I came to the conclusion that I had in my 
hands an opportunity for doing a great deal of 
good by the simple course of maldng my 
defence.. 

And I concluded, also, that my testimony in 
this matter had peculiar weight, as coming from 
one who is of a dramatic family, and may be 
presumed to speak from close and immediate 
observation, if not fi'om experience. . 

I, therefore, wrote the words which follow; 
and, in reproducing them here, I shall only ex- 
press the sincere hope that when this book is 
read, the evil here treated of will be so much a 
11* 



126 ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES. 

tiling of the past, tliat tliis chapter shall possess 
no other value than as a record of a dark page 
in the history of the theatre. 

Though for some years I have not played a 
part in a theatre, I have not been altogether 
separated from association with its people. The 
ties which bind me to these people are strong 
and close. I never expect to sever them wholly ; 
but they shall never prevent me from giving my 
allegiance to the cause of morality, virtue, honor, 
and integrity, though, as a consequence of this, 
the theatrical heavens fall. 

That curse of the dramatic profession, for 
which editors, critics, authors, and managers 
struggle to find a iitting name, is my general 
theme in this article ; which is, at the same time, 
my defence against the charge of slandering the 
dramatic profession. 

What the .Tribune calls the Dirty Drama, the 
World the Nude Drama, the Times the Leg 
Drama, and other journals various other ex- 
pressive adjective styles of drama, I call the Leg 
Business, simply. 



ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES. 127 

Does any one call the caperings of a tight-rope 
performer the ^rial Drama 1 — the tricks of an 
educated hog the Porcine Drama ? 

There is a term in use among " professionals " 
which embraces all sorts of performances in its 
comprehensiveness, to wit : The Show Business. 

In this term is included every possible thing 
which is of the nature of an entertainment, with 
these three requirements : 1. A place of gather- 
insc. 2. An admission fee. 3. An audience. 

This remarkably comprehensive term covers 
with the same mantle the tragic Forrest, when he 
plays; the comic Jefferson, when he plays; the 
eloquent Beecher, when he lectures; and the 
sweet-voiced Parepa, \vhen she sings. It also 
covers mth the same mantle the wandering 
juggler, who balances feathers on his nose ; the 
gymnast, who whirls on a trapeze ; the danseuse, 
who interprets the poetry of motion ; the clown, 
who cracks stale jokes in the ring; the performer 
on the tight-rope, the negro minstrel, the giant 
and the dwarf, the learned pig, and the educated 
monkey. Therefore, it includes the clog-dancing 
creature, with yellow hair and indecent costume. 



128 ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES. 

All these things bemg included in the show 
business, you see it is almost as wide a world as 
the outer world. It must" be a very wide world 
which should include Mr. Beecher with the 
learned pig. 

It must be a very wide world which should 
include Rachel, Ristori, Janauschek, and Lander 
with the clog-dancing creature of indecent action 
and attire. 

But, by as good a right as you w^ould call Mr. 
Beecher and the learned pig performers in the 
intellectual sphere, you would call Janauschek 
and the clog-dancing creature interpreters of the 

DEAMA. 

How, then, does it happen that in attacking 
these yellow-haired nudities, I am compelled to 
say that they disgrace the dramatic profession ? 

In tliis wise : These creatures occupy the tem- 
ples of the drama ; they perform in conjunction 
with actors and actresses, on the same stage, 
before the. same audience, in the same hour. 
They are made legitimate members of our 
theatrical companies, and take part in those 
nondescript performances which are called bur- 



ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES. 129 

lesqiies, spectacles, what yon will. They carry 
off the chief honors of the honr; their names 
occnpy the chief places on the bills; and, as 
I said in my speech at the Eqnal Eights Meeting 
at Steinway Hall, they win the cliief prizes in 
the theatrical world. 

A woman, who has not ability enough to rank 
as a passable " walking lady " in a good theatre, 
on a salary of twenty-five dollars a week, can 
strip herself almost naked, and be thns qnaliiied 
to go npon the stage of two-thirds of our 
theatres at a salary of one hundred dollars and 
upwards. 

Clothed in the dress of an honest woman, she 
is worth nothing to a manager. Stripped as 
naked as she dare — and it seems there is little 
left when so much is done — she becomes a prize 
to her manager, who knows that crowds will rush 
to see her, and who pays her a salary accord- 
ingly. 

These are simple facts, which permit of no 
denial. I doubt if there is a manager in the 
land who would dream of denying them. 



130 ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES. 

There are certain accomplisliments which 
render the Kude Woman "more valuable to 
managers in the degree that she possesses 
them." I will tell you what these accomplish- 
ments are, and you shall judge how far they 
go toward making her, in any true sense, an 
actress. 

They are: 1. The ability to sing. 2. The 
ability to jig. 3. The ability to play on certain 
musical instruments. 

Now that I have put them down, I perceive 
that they need explanation, after all; so com- 
plete is the perversion of everything pertaining 
to this theme, that the very language is beggared 
of its power of succinct expression. 

To sing. Yes, but not to sing as Parepa 
sings; nor such songs as she sings. The songs 
in demand in this sphere are vulgar, senseless — ■ 
and, to be most triumphantly successful, should 
be capable of indecent constructions, and accom- 
panied by the wink, the wriggle, the grimace, 
which are not peculiar to virtuous women, what- 
ever else they are. The more senseless the song, 
the more utterly it is idiotic diivel, the better it 



ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES. 131 

will answer in the absence of the baser requisites. 
Here is a specimen : 

' ' Little Bo-peep, she lost her sheep, 

And don''t know where to ^-ind her; 
Leave her alone and she'll come home, 
And fetch her tail he\n.-ind her." 

A simple nursery song; and, if men were 
babies, innocent and harmless in itself ; but men 
are not babies, and the song is not snng in a 
simple or harmless manner, but. with the wink or 
the idiotic stare that means a world, and sets the 
audience into an extatic roaring. 

To jig. Let no one confound jig-dancing 
with the poetry of motion which is illustrated by 
a thoroughly organized and thorough-bred body 
of ballet-dancers. 

Ballet-dancing is a profession by itself, just as 
distinctly as is singing in opera. A danseuse, 
like Fanny EUsler or Taglioni, or, to come to the 
present moment, like Morlacchi, is no more to be 
ranked with these nude jiggers than an actress 
like Mrs. Lander is. 

The ability to jig is an accomplishment which 



132 ABOUT NUDITY m THEATRES. 

any of these nude creatures can pick up in a few 
weeks. A danseuse, who has any claim what- 
ever to the title of artwte, mnst be bred to her 
profession through years of toil and study. 

In this country, the ballet proper has had little 
illustration. Yet it is a branch of art, — not 
the noblest art, it is true ; but, by the side of the 
jigging woman, almost rising to dignity. 

To ^lay on certain musioal instruments. 
These instruments should be such as to look 
queer in a woman's hands, — such instruments 
as the banjo and the bugle. 

IS'ow, I am not saying that the ability to sing 
silly songs, to jig, or to play the banjo, in itself 
disgraces a w^oman, how^ever little it may entitle 
her to my esteem. I am only calling attention 
to them as valuable aids to the nude woman in 
her business, and letting you judge whether they 
give her any right to the name of actress. 

You, no doubt, will at once remark that these 
accomplishments have hitherto been peculiar to 
that branch of the show business occupied by the 
negro minstrel. But in the hands of the negro 
minstrel, these accomplishments amuse us w^ith- 



ABOUT NUDITY m TREATIES. 133 

out disgusting us. They are not wedded to bare 
legs, indecent wriggles, nor suggestive feminine 
leers and winks; nor is there a respectable 
minstrel band in the United States to-day which 
would tolerate in its members the double en- 
tetidres which fly about the stages of some of the 
largest temples of the drama in this city. The 
minstrels would not dare utter them. Their 
halls would be vacated, and their business 
ruined. It requires that a half-naked woman 
should utter these ribaldrous inuendoes, before 
our fastidious public will receive them unre- 
bukingly. 

To what branch of the show business, then, do 
these creatures belong ? 

I answer, to that branch which is known by 
the names of variety-show, concert-saloon, music- 
hall, and various other titles, which mean nothing 
unless you already know what they mean. 

ISTo one in the show business needs to be told 
what a variety-show is. It certainly is not a 
theatre. 

Until the reign of the nude woman set in, 
variety-halls were the resort of only the lowest 
13 



134 ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES. 

and vilest, and women were not seen in tlie 
audience. 

The nude woman was sometimes seen npon 
the stage, but she was only one of a large variety 
of attractions, — she was a tid-bit, hugely relished 
by the low and vile who went to see her ; but 
only permitted to exhibit herself economically, 
for fear of cloying the public appetite. 

Delicate caution! but how useless, her later 
career in our theatres has shown. 

There, she is exhibited ceaselessly for three 
hours, in every variety which an indecent im- 
agination can devise. 

When the Blach Crook first presented its 
nude woman to the gaze of a crowded auditory, 
she was met with a gasp of astonishment at the 
effrontery which dared so much. Men actually 
grew pale at the boldness of the thing ; a death- 
like silence fell over the house, broken only by 
the clapping of a band of claqueurs around the 
outer aisles ; but it passed ; and, in view of the 
fact that these women were French ballet- 
dancers after all, they were tolerated. 

By slow and almost imperceptible degrees, this 



ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES. 135 

shame has grown, until to-day the indecency of 
that exhibition is far sni-passed. Those women 
were ballet-dancers from France and Italy, and 
they represented in their nudity imps and 
demons. In silence they whirled about the 
stage; in silence trooped off. Some faint odor 
of ideality and poetry rested over them. 

The nude woman of to-day represents nothing 
but herself. She runs upon the stage giggling ; 
trots down to the foot-lights, winks at the 
audience, rattles off from her tongue some stupid 
attempts at wit, some twaddling allusions to 
Sorosis, or General Grant, or other subject prom- 
inent in the public eye, and is always peculiarly 
and emphatically herself, — the woman, that is, 
whose name is on the bills in large letters, and 
who considers herself an object of admiration to 
the spectators. 

The sort of ballet-dancer who figured in the 
Black Crooh is paralleled on the stage of every 
theatre in this city, except one, at this time. 

She no longer excites attention. 

To create a proper and profitable sensation in 
the breast of man, she no longer suffices. Some- 



136 ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES. 

thing bolder must be debased, — something that 
shall utterly eclipse and outstrip her. 

Ilence, the nude woman of to-day, — who out- 
strips lier in the broadest sense. And, as if it 
were not enough that she should be allowed to 
go unhissed and unrotten-egged, she must be 
baptized with the honors of a profession for 
which Shakespeare wrote! 

Managers recognize her as an actress, and pay 
her sums ranging from fifty to a thousand 
dollars a week, .according to her value in their 
eyes. Actresses, who love virtue better than 
money, are driven into the streets by her ; and it 
becomes a grave and solemn question with, 
hundreds of honorable women what they shall 
do to earn a livelihood. 

I say it is nothing less than an insult to the 
members of the dramatic profession, that these 
nude women should be classed among actresses 
and hold possession of the majority of our thea- 
tres. Their place is in the concei-t-saloons or the 
circus tents. Theatres are for artists. 

A friend said to me the other day that it was 
inconsistent in me to find indecency in women 



ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES. 137 

exposing their persons, when men constantly do 
the same; that, as an honest exponent of 
Woman's Eights, I ought to see no more immod- 
est j in a woman dancing a jig in flesh-colored 
leggings than in a man performing a circus feat 
in the same costume. 

I reply, that I think such shows are indecent 
in both sexes. Yet, nevertheless, in woman a 
thousand times more indecent than in man ; for 
the simple reason, that the costume of the sexes 
in every-day life is different. 

To ignore this fact is to just wilfully shut 
one's eyes to a reasonable argument. 

Women in society conceal all the lower part of 
their bodies with drapery, — and for good and 
sufficient reasons, which no man, who has a wife 
or mother, should stop to question. 

But set this aside. Circus men, who strip to 
the waist in this fashion, don't claim to be actors. 

Now, I come back to the words I said at the 
Woman Suffrage Convention. They have been 
variously reported by the newspapers. They 
were exactly as follows, — 
12* 



138 ABO UT NUDITY IN THE A TUBS. 

"I can advise no honorable, self-respecting 
woman to turn to the stage for support, with its 
demoralizing influences, which seem to be grow- 
ing stronger and stronger day by day ; where the 
greatest rewards are won by a set of brazen- 
faced, clog-dancing creatures, with dyed yellow 
hair and padded limbs, who have come here 
in droves from across the ocean." 

I have been astonished and pained at the 
extent to which the meaning of these words has 
been distorted. The press and my anonymous 
letter critics seem to be agreed in taking the 
view, that I attack, in these words, the profession 
in which I was reared, and all my family. 

Some of the letters sent me are from religious 
people, encouraging me to go on; others are 
from actors and actresses, seeking to dissuade 
me, — not always in gentle language. 

The first letter on which I lay my hands, so 
gross in its language that I suspect it to be from 
one of the nude women themselves, says, — 

" You were, no doubt, satisfied with the stage 
so long as it paid. I^ow, don't swear at the 
bridge that carried you over." 



ABOUT NUDIIY IN THEATRES. 139 

Perhaps this person, being new to the country, 
thinks it is true, as a newspaper once said, that 
I was formerly a ballet-girl. 

Hitherto, I have only laughed at this story, as 
on a par with that of the person who thought me 
a daughter of the negro preacher, Loguen; or 
that of the " dress reform " scarecrow, who be- 
lieved me " formerly a ballad songstress." 

I laugh at it no longer. I answer, in all 
gravity, that I never was a ballet-girl, nor even a 
jig-dancer. 

It is true that I was once a member of the 
theatrical profession ; so were my father and my 
mother ; so were my five sisters ; but I say with 
pride that never was there a Logan who sought 
any connection with the stage save in the capacity 
of a legitimate player. 

There were no nude women on the stage in my 
father's day. Such exhibitions as are now made 
on the stage of many leading theatres were, in 
his day, confined to that branch of the show busi- 
ness known as the Model Artists, — another per- 
version of words; but most people know their 
meaning in their present acceptation. 



140 ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES. 

Across this infamous bridge no Logan ever 
walked. 

And, one by one, every member of our family 
has left the stage behind, until, at this writing, 
not one remains upon it ; though of their num- 
ber, there are seven still li^dng who have trod the 
boards. 

Here it is proper that I should say why I left 
the stage. The Commercial Advertiser and the 
Philadelphia Dispatch are the only journals 
I have seen wliich have intimated that my hatred 
of indecency is born of jealousy ; thus implying 
that I ceased to be an actress because these nude 
women had encroached upon my territory so far 
that I was forced to leave, or do what they do. 

This is not true. As for the nude women, 
their reign had not yet set in at the time I left 
the stage. But I was not forced from the stage 
at all. My success as an actress was always fully 
equal to my deserts; and, up to the very day 
I retired from the stage, I was in receipt of large 
sums for my services as an actress. As a star (in 
which capacity I played in the leading theatres 
of this country, from Wallack's, in New York, to 



ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES. 141 

McYickei-'s, in Chicago) my earnings were very 
large, — sometimes reaching one thousand dollai-s 
per week. TTlien I played for a salary, the 
lowest sum I ever received — save when I 
was a mere cliild — was one hundred dollai*s per 
week. 

I left the stage respecting it and many of its 
people ; but my resolve was to live, henceforth, 
by my pen. I preferred literature to acting, sim- 
ply on the score of congeniality; and I have 
never regretted the day when I turned to it. 
I love it with all my soul, and have several times 
refused most tempting offers to leave it and 
return to the stage. 

How, then, can I be jealous of these women ? 
I am no longer a rival for their place in the 
theatres. No, it is no such ignoble feeling as 
this which animates me ; it is a feeling of shame 
that the stage should be so degraded, the drama 
so disgraced, by the place the nude woman has 
taken, united to a feeling of sympathy with the 
numerous modest and virtuous actresses who are 
crowded from a sphere which they could adorn 
and honor, — crowded from it not by superior 



142 ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES. 

talent, nor even by greater beauty, but by sheer 
brazen immodesty, and by unblushing vice. 

I take up next an anonymous letter, dated at 
Boston, and signed, "A Sister Member of the 
Profession." 

The writer says she is a respectable actress, and 
professes to be ignorant that gross evils prevail in 
the theatrical world. 

She refers to my letter in the I^ew York 
Times, and asks at what theatre such questions 
were ever put to an applicant for employment. 

In my letter to the Times, I said, — 

"I referred the other night to decent young 
women who are not celebrities, — merely honest, 
modest girls, whose parents have left them the 
not very desirable heritage of the stage, and who 
find it difficult to obtain any other employment, 
being uneducated for any other. When these 
girls go into a theatre to apply for a situation 
now, they find that the requirements of managers 
are expressed in the following questions, — 

"1. Is your hair dyed yellow ? 

"2. Are your legs, arms, and bosom symme- 



ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES 143 

trieally formed, and are you willing to expose 
tliem? 

" 3. Can you sing brassy songs, and dance the 
can-can, and wink at men, and give utterance to 
disgusting half words, which mean whole ac- 
tions ? 

"4. Ai-e you acquainted with any rich men 
who will throw you flowers, and send you pres- 
ents, and keep afloat dubious rumors concerning 
your chastity ? 

"5. Are you willing to appear to-night, and 
every night, amid the glare of gas-lights, and 
before the gaze of thousands of men, in this pair 
of satin breeches, ten inches long, without a ves- 
tige of drapery upon your person ? 

"If you can answer these questions affirma- 
tively, we will give you a situation ; if not, there's 
the door." 

At nothing have I been more astonished than 
at the manner in whicli this letter has been re- 
ceived by certain " professionals." 

Wlien one of our daily newspapers says that the 
streets of this city are in a filthy condition, does 
a resident of Fifth Avenue rush down to the 



144 ABOUT miDITY IN THEATRES., 

editor's sanctum to call him a liar, and point him 
to the cleanliness of Fifth Avenue ? 

It seems incredible that any one conld be so 
stupid as to imagine me making reference to 
such managers, for instance, as Edwin Booth, 
Mr. Field, of the Boston Museum, or Mrs. John 
Drew, of Philadelphia ! 

These managers, and a few like them, form 
the exception to the rule. To such, all honor! 
But it is a sufficient indication of the enormity of 
this shame to say that the rage for nudity has 
intruded in some shape upon the stage of every 
theatre in tliis city, excej)t one. 

Here is a list of the places in this city where 
the English drama claims, or has claimed, a place, 
at one time or another, in its highest or its lowest 
manifestations, — 

Academy of Music, Booth's, 
Fisk's Grand Theatre, "Wood's Museum, 
Fifth Avenue Theatre, Theatre Comique, 
Wallack's, The Tammany, 

New York Theatre, The Waverly, 
Olympic, Xiblo's Garden, 

Broadway Theatre, Bowery Theatre, 

Theatre Fran5ais, Pastor's Opera House. 



ABOUT NUDITY IN THETABES. 145 

- Two of the above-named places are now 
closed; but, at this writing, it is inimored that 
one of them is to be opened for the use of a 
newlj organized troupe of nude women. 

Of this whole list, there is but one (Booth's, 
which is only a few months old) which can claim 
that it has always been fi*ee fi'om any symptom 
of this licentious fever. 

"Four weeks from this time," says the l^ew 
York Beview of May 15, " there will be only 
two theatres in Kew York that will offer dra- 
matic works. The rest will be show-shops, hav- 
ing as little to do with dramatic art as so many 
comer groceries." 

As to the questions themselves, as printed 
above, they are, of course, suppositious. It is not 
said that managers put these exact questions to 
applicants. It is said tliat " the requirertieiits of 
managers are expressed in these questions^ 

This is strictly true. 

It is not necessary, I suppose, to give with 
the accuracy of a criminal trial report the exact 
questions which pass between managers and act- 
resses who seek for employment. Their pm-poii; 
13 



140 ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES, 

is nnmistakable. Take this one which "v^'as 
asked a beautiful and modest young woman 
whom I have known for years, an actress by pro- 
fession, who was qnietly edged out of her last 
situation because she carried decency and 
womanly reserve too far in the presence of an 
audience which cheered to the echo the nude 
creatures who trod the same stage with her, — 

" Are you u^ in this style of husiness f " 

This question needed no interpreter, — for the 
manager pointed, as he spoke, to one of the mem- 
bers of his company, photograplied in an immod- 
est attitude, with her legs clad in flesh-colored 
silk and her body in a tight-fitting breech-cloth, 
richly embroidered. 

She was not "up in" this sort of business; she 
sought employment as an actress ; there was none 
for her, and she went away, to apply with like 
results at other theatres. 

She sought employment, as a respectable act- 
ress, at fifteen or twenty dollars a week. She 
\ would have refused five hundred dollars a week 
salary to do what the nude woman does. 

If the above instance does not indicate mana- 



ABOUT NUDITY m THEATRES. 147 

gerial requirements sufficiently, take these state- 
ments from managerial lips, — 

"Devil take your legitimate drama! I tell 
you if I can't draw the crowd otherwise, I'll put 
a woman on my stage without a rag on her." 

So said a manager of this city in the hearing 
of a dozen people; and the disgusting remark 
was bandied about from mouth to mouth as if 
it had been wit. 

A proprietor of one of the theatres above- 
named, where a legitimate play was running with- 
out paying expenses, rubbed his dry old hands 
together, and said, — 

" Aha ! we must have some of those /«/ young 
women in this piece to make it di*aw." 

I go down to Boston for a moment, where 
lives this anonymous letter- writing actress who is 
so singularly ignorant of what is passing about 
her, to mention the rumor which was set afloat 
hy a man-ager of a certain one of the blonde 
nudities, to the effect that she was once the mis- 
tress of the Prince of Wales. 

This manager deemed it to his interest to keep 



148 ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRE 8. 

this vile story afloat. It gave an added piquancy 
to the creature who nightly wriggled about his 
stage in a dress of silk which fitted her form all 
over as tightly as a glove. 

I stay in Boston long enough to note that, in 
the late Working-woman's Convention there, a 
lady related the trials of a young friend of hers, 
who went upon the stage and endured insult and 
wickedness from managers. The same lady cor- 
roborated my own observations, with the state- 
ment, that managers look upon the girls they 
employ as women of the town. 

My anonymous " sister member of the profes- 
sion" has been fortunate beyond most actresses of 
this period, in coming in contact with nothing of 
this sort. 

I return to ^ew York, to direct attention to 
that manager of blonde nudities who has won, 
probably, the most money for his speculations in 
yellow hair and padded legs of any one in the 
business. 

This person is an Englishman, — said to be, by 
birth, a gentleman (in the Enghsh or aristocratic 



ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES. 14.9 

sense of the word), and who, on entering the 
theatrical world, concealed his real name. 

It is known that this man is a most licentious 
and shameless roue, who publicly boasts of the 
number of blonde women who have been his 
mistresses at different times ; who actually perpe- 
trated the monstrous indecency of making these 
infamous boasts in a speech at a dinner where 
women were present ! 

Among other things this disgraceful creature 
said was this: that a certain woman who had 
broken her professional engagement with him 
ought to have remembered the fact that she 
had once been his mistress, and had borne him 
children ! 

This infamous boast was coupled with the jeer- 
ing remai'k that, in spite of the fact that he had 
no legal claim upon her services, he had a moral 
one in the fact just stated. 

Shame ! that such a monster as tliis should be 
permitted to remain in this country, the master of 
a drove of nude women, who are exhibiting them- 
selves nightly to crowded houses, at the largest 
theatre on Broadway, and fill his already gorged 
13* 



150 ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES. 

pockets at tlie expense of disgrace to the dra- 
matic profession, and distress to many of its 
members ! 

"Were he to be hooted and stoned throngh tho 
streets of this city, and packed off to England, 
covered with obloquy, it would be wfeU. But 
packing him off would hardly rid the stage of 
this curse, since there are plenty of men besides 
him who are as vile as he, in all save the infamy 
of boasting. 

With a sigh of relief, I turn to another anony- 
mous letter, dated at New Haven, and signed 
" One who loves Jesus." 

The writer of this letter is evidently a woman. 
It is tender and sweet in its tone. " I assure 
you," says the good lady, " your noble stand will 
be esteemed by all good, moral people." 1 have 
abundant proof of that ; and if I, in my turn, can 
lead all such people to think more gently of good 
and true actors and actresses, I shall thank heaven 
with a full heart. 

"Asa child of God, " this letter says, " I must 
esteem the theatre as the devil's play-house." 



ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES. 151 

There was a time, not very long ago, when I 
should have taken great offence at this. That 
time is past. I recognize the devil's play-house 
in the theatre where the nude woman jigs and 
wriggles. 

If there be any such actual entity as that same 
old theological devil, I can easily* imagine him 
kicking up his hoofs in Mephistophilean joy at 
the harvests that are falling into his lap from the 
temples of the nude. 

But, dear lady, — you who write me from New 
Haven, — on the middle ground where I stand, I 
see what you can not see, and know what you can 
not know. All theatres do not deserve the 
stiorma of this term. It is true that the theatres 
which still remain devoted to the drama proper 
are very, very few ; but there are such ; and they 
are no more the " devil's play-house " than is the 
concert-room where Parepa sings. They are not 
consecrated to the service of God, it is true ; but, 
at least, they are not given over to the devil's 
work. 

I respect the theatre in its purity. I respect 
the actor who is an artist, — even the harmless 



152 ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES. 

clown of the pantomime, who makes us laugh 
without offending decency. That I love so many 
good and lovely women who are actresses, is my 
chief reason for deploring the reign of a class of 
women who are neither good nor lovely, — but 
coarse, indecent, painted, padded, and dyed. 

If it were possible to treat the E'ude Woman 
Question, and leave the nude woman herself out 
of it, I should be glad to do so. I am the last to 
wish to give pain to any person ; but, in the path 
of clear duty, there is no choice. When it be- 
comes a question between suffering, struggling 
virtue, and vice which rolls in luxury, and gath- 
ers unto itself wealth by the sheer practice of its 
wickedness, no woman who loves honor in her 
sex can hesitate as to the course to be taken. 

The spirit of most of the anonymous letters I 
have received is one which might well cause me 
to hesitate in the path I have chosen, if fear were 
stronger in me than principle. But neither the 
sneers of low-class newspapers, nor the threats 
of anonymous correspondents, shall have weight 
with me. I see no other way to effect a cure of 



ABOUT NUDITY IN THEATRES. 153 

this nnde woman evil but to make it odious. To 
that end, I sliall do what in me lies. This article 
is but a beo-innino^. I shall not cease to combat 
the encroachments of the nude woman upon the 
domain which should be occupied by true artists, 
and by virtuous men and women. 

Firm in the belief that this indecent army can 
be routed, I call on all honorable souls, both in 
and out of the profession, to stand by my side and 
strike hard blows. We shall get hard blows in 
return, no doubt ; but poor indeed must be the 
panoply of that warrior who can not hold his own 
against the cohorts of the nude woman. What- 
ever falls on my head in consequence of my 
words, I promise to give thrust for thrust. I do 
not fear the issue. 

" Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel 
Just.' 




XL 



ABOUT THE «' RUN. 




TTEN a play is bronglit oat wliicli has a 
prolonged " run," the world behind the 
scenes takes on peculiar aspects. 
There is a great deal of excitement about it, at 
first; and pleasurable excitement, too. The 
reading of the play; the distributing of the 
"parts"; the rehearsals, although fatiguing, in- 
teresting; the suggestions of the author in regard 
to the making of certain " points " ; the desire 
to succeed, — sometimes, alas! most wofully 
baffled ; the hopes, the fears, the uncertainty, — 
until, at last, all doubt is set at rest, culminating 
in the first representation, and then and there 
ending ignominiously in a failure, or gloriously 
in " a hit." 

A piece which has failed, has fallen, like Luci- 

(154) 



ABOUT THE ''RUN:' 155 

fer, never to rise again. The greatest charity 
which can be shown it, is to regard it as a thing 
which has never been ; or which, having been, 
and been badly, can never again be. 

Of a thing which has no being, it is obviously 
not the duty of a writer to treat ; therefore, 'tis 
the "crowning success of the season" (what- 
ever it may be), " the talk of the town," the piece 
which, in point of fact, has clutched at a sin- 
gle bound the half-dollar diadem of the dress- 
circle and displays similar gymnastic tendencies 
towards the private boxes and orchestra-stalls, 
with which I have now to do. 

The nervousness which is so apparent at a first 
representation is hardly rubbed off before the 
end of the first week. Even if the actor is quite 
certain that the remorseless newspaper-man 
Scroggins, and the dreaded " dramatic " of the 
"Weekly Snarler, Mr. O'Pinionated, have both 
seen it and done their worst or best towards 
damning him and the piece, there is still the 
fear that others of their class may this night or 
never be in " front," and at the very moment 
he is debiting his best speech, are engaged 



156 ABOUT THE '' BTTN:-> 

probably in scrawling vindictive phrases against 
him in the nnscrupulons note-book of the critic- 
inincl. 

Then, after these persons are disposed of, — 
when these pen-and-ink skeletons of the dramatic 
closet are shut np in it and the key tnrned on 
them securely, — there presently appears another 
Bogie as appalling to the actor's mind as to the 
imagination of the schoolboy the fearful sprites 
of the Mysteries of Udolpho. 

This takes the shape of a rival artist who sits 
in front and sneers with his lips, his eyes, — sneers 
with shrugging shoulder and finger-iillip, — ■ 
sneers with every convenient portion of his anat- 
omy ; whispers sneeringly to his next neighbor, 
laughs sneeringly at the pathetic portion of the 
play, and looks sneeringly bored at the " jokes." 
Sneers in every way, and at every thing, until at 
length the unhappy actor who is being sneered 
at, losing all heart, soon loses his head, — making 
forthwith some frightful blunder which really 
merits sneering from the sneerer and receives its 
merits to the full. 

In spite of this, the poor actor must continue 
the piece, knowing as well that he will be finally 



ABOUT THE ''RUN.'' 157 

hanged by that military commission of a sneerer 
in front as any condemned man can know his 
doom beforehand. 

There may be pardon for the most dastardly 
murderer, at the hands of the governor of the 
State ; but assuredly there is none for the actor, 
at the liands of his rival (who, by-the-by, inva- 
riably comes in on a deadhead ticket). 

But after the first eight or ten nights the actor 
begins to become impervious to all these sights 
and sounds. No longer troubled about the t^xt, 
the words come glibly, and ease of action follows 
as a natural result. This, coupled with the 
knowledge that the author has given him a cheer- 
ing word, or the manager, perhaps, expressed 
satisfaction with his efforts, inspires him with 
new com-age, and, for the nonce, he plays the 
part, — not so well as it might be played, doubt- 
less, — but certainly as well as he can play it. 

This would be a very desirable state of things, 
if it could continue. But in this wicked world 
of ours what thing can continue, or what state 
of things can continue at the neutral point of 
being simply satisfactory ? 
14 



158 ABOUT THE ''RUN:' 

Soon the actor begins to tire of his part. The 
speeches, which, during the first few weeks of the 
run of the piece, he gave with such elan, — the 
jokes which he then uttered with such mirth and 
intention, — have now become, whatever they 
may be to the audience, an old story to the 
actor. 

He wonders how they can laugh at the witti- 
cisms which, to his mind, are stale, or applaud 
the heroics now to him so very flat and unprofit- 
able. 

Between his " waits " he falls as nearly asleep 
as he dares, and goes on the stage fully as dull as 
he can. 

He is astonished that such crowds will still 
flock to see the piece. For himself he is " sick " 
of it, and yet dreads the trouble whixih the 
" getting-up " of another would involve. 

So, divided between actual discontent with this, 
and anticipated discontent of the other, he goes 
on in that dramatic treadmill widely known as 
the " run of a piece." 

Sometimes he has good reason to be weary. 
Sometimes a little melo-drama without music, or 



ABOUT THE ''BUN:' 159 

a tragedy not written in blank verse, lias been en- 
acted around bis own beartbstone, with bis wife 
and cbildren in tbe principal parts. Mariana, 
bis bride, has died, perbaps, before tbe end of tbe 
fifth act ; or liis cbildren have been strangled, not 
like the young Princes, in a dungeon at tbe 
tower, but in bis own poor room,' spite of all 
efforts to save them, by the murderous hand of 
the destroyer — Diphtheria. 

Never mind. Take up thy staff, Jew, and 
wander on through tbe intricate mazes of tbe 
" run " of a piece. 

I have bad experience in this sort myself, more 
than once. I mind me of a particular night 
when I was playing my last engagement on 
the stage, — at tbe Broadway theatre, now, like 
myself, no longer part of the mimic world. 

As I was going on tbe stage, I heard of the 
death of a man whom I had scarcely seen above 
a dozen times in my life, — whom, if he had lived, 
I might not have met another dozen times in 
as many years, — yet whom I grieved for as for a 
'dead brother, for he was of the brotherhood of 
those who love the good, the unsulHed, the true, 



160 ABOUT THE 'liUJV^ 

the truly beautiful, and spoke liis love in poesy 
which still echoes down the avenues of time. 

Do you wonder that the wit of 'the author of 
our piece suffered at my hands that night ? That 
his repartee I made pointless, and his sentiment 
not less so ? 

The trained lips smiled, and the false laugh 
rang out merrily as before ; but instead of the 
crowd of pleasure-seekers who had come to see 
our comedy that night, my dimmed eyes kept 
conjuring up and gazing sadly, tenderly, upon a 
beautiful dead face which so short a time ago 
sparkled in its every feature with the brilliancy 
of the beautiful mind behind it. 

" All, well," I sighed, " the turf will rest 
lightly on that brave young breast ; flowers will 
spring spontaneously on the sod whi(}h covers 
that poetic heart, — more fresh, more lovely, 
more tender than the fragrantest flowers them- 
selves ! " 

We all feel and know that heaven is a beau- 
tiful place, and we are all trying, in different 
ways and each after his own fashion, to .get 
there. 



ABOUT THE ''RUN:' 161 

But tliis will never do, will it % 

You engaged me for your liglit-comedy busi- 
ness, and here I am sitting with tears falling on 
the paper fast as rain, and experiencing the most 
undeniable want of a pocket-handkerchief ! 

I don't wear spectacles yet, and therefore can 
not lose them ; but handkerchiefs have a peculiar 
way of wandering from my gaze like a beautiful 
dream, and my only resource being to get up and 
seek fresh ones, limits my stock very soon, and 
awakens recrimination in the breast of the wash- 
erwoman, who has plainly avowed to me that 
henceforth and forever two handkerchiefs shall 
count as two pieces, and not (as heretofore) as 
one. 

Tliis arithmetic of the laundry, which goes to 
prove the somewhat paradoxical fact that one 
and one make one, is perhaps a novelty to you. 

I hope it is so. 

It proves that your shirt-bosom's lord sits 
lightly on his throne. 

But I assure you that this singular multiplica- 
tion-table is practised, like accidents, in the best- 
regulated families. 
14* 



163 ABOUT THE '' RUN:' 

From liandkercliiefs I retm-n, Othello-like, to 
tlie tlieatre. 

A cheerful feature in the " run " of a piece is 
the weekly matinee, which style of performance 
is now very popular, and patronized almost exclu- 
sively by the sweetest beings who can patronize a 
theatre, — sweet women and sweeter children. 

The dear little Latter stare at the play with all 
their eyes, and clap theii* little chubby hands, 
and show other unmistakable signs of glee, until 
at last they get tired, and sleepy, and fretful, and 
have to be taken home. 

The dear Former, little and great, stout and 
slender, young and old, laugh with the chil- 
dren, — interfere witJi the players a little by ex- 
j^laining the plot of the piece in concise and baby 
language, and point one of them out as the lady 
who was at grandma's to tea the other evening, 
which fact baby declines to believe, on the 
ground that she wore a black silk di-ess then, and 
is differently costumed now; and presently the 
curtain comes down for good, leaving the ques- 
tion still unsettled and still in dispute. 

Sweet, sweet little credulous children ! Bright, 



ABOUT THE ''RUN:' 1G3 

pretty young wives and mothers ! It is worth 
acting at a matinee, if for nought else than to see 
the charming sight which together you present. 

But for all that, it is dull work. 

Especially if it happens to be a rainy day, 
when everything without is dark, and wretched, 
and gloomy. 

Especially if it happens to be a sunsliiny day, 
when everything without is glad, and glorious 
and free, and when the wretchedness, and gloom, 
and darkness are within, — sometimes, alas ! liid 
away in the depths of our bleeding, throbbing 
hearts. 

A ray of sunlight striking through the chink 
of an ill-closed door, overpowers the gas and 
shows the hideousness of a painted face by day- 
hght. Shows the falsity of all things. The 
pasteboard goblets ; the unsteady thrones which 
look inviting enough to the eye but which prove 
treacherous as real ones do, when you try to 
mount their steps. Shows the spider's web, and 
the unguarded fly left to pursue its destiny alone. 
Shows that the royal purple is very cheap stuff, 
indeed. Shows that much that glitters is not 



164 ABOUT THE '' BTIN:' 

gold. Shows that there is no ink in the inkstand, 
and that the qnill-pen has no point. Shows the 
marriage contract blank to this day though it 
has been used fifty times, and ostensibly signed 
and sealed. 

And I muse on the hoUowness and emptiness 
of things, — for it is not on the stage alone that 
things are not what they seem. 

My thoughts wander back through the story of 
an eventfTd life, full of strange vicissitudes ; and 
presently find myself far away from the mimic 
woi^d, in fancy again \dewing the realties of that 
glittering period, — my first year in Paris. 




XII. 



ABOUT MY FIRST YEAR IN PARIS. 




Y position was a peculiar one in many 
respects, when I was in my seventeenth 
year of life on earth, my iirst year of life 
in P3,ris. 

My daily companions were the ladies and 
gentlemen of Louis IN'apoleon's court. It was 
erroneously believed that to get admitted to the 
salons where I presided, was equivalent to 
setting foot in the very ante-room of royalty, — a 
belief, the existence of which, I must in justice 
say, was at the time unknown to me, and for 
which I was in no way responsible. 

I now had my first taste of the power of 
Power, — or, more properly speaking, of the 
power of supposed Power. There were all sorts 
of people at my doors incessantly, wanting all 

(165) 



166 ABOUT MY FIMST YEAR- IN PARIS. 

Borts of favors, — fi'om the sale to the French 
government of a patent vahied at a million 
francs, to the secm*ing of a seat in the imperial 
chapel at the Tuileries for the coming Smiday 
morning, — and as I was at that age when one 
wishes to please everybody, I always did my 
little best to get everybody's requests gi-anted. 

There were French people, and English people, 
and people of all lands, among these haimters of 
my threshold, but more than all others, there 
were Americans. 

The generality of these, like true-bom Yan- 
kees as they were, had " inventions " which they 
were anxious to sell to the government. Gene- 
ally, it was something Jn the way of fire-arms, 
though sewing-machines, bread-making machines, 
and many other machines, found their way to 
my residence in the Faubourg St. Honore for 
inspection. 

To find an American — these deluded people 
thought — in such a very exceptional position, 
was something most extraordinary : a person who 
could look at your inventions in one minute, and 



ABOUT MY FIRST YE AM IN PARIS. 167 

twenty minutes later stand in the emperor's 
presence and speak directly to him about 
them, — it was wonderful ! Such a person must 
be got at, — must be propitiated, and made 
to take a personal interest in every inventor's 
cause. 

It was not difficult to say a good word for 
these worthy men. Generally, however, the in- 
ventions were chimerical illusions, or delusions, 
whose uselessness it only required a practical test 
to clearly demonstrate. 

One of these, I well remember, was a bread- 
baking apparatus, presented by a gentleman of 
Cincinnati, whose cause I espoused with especial 
enthusiasm in view of his hailing from the west- 
ern city where my mother, brother, and sistei*s 
lived. To hear of the operations of this wonder- 
ful apparatus was like listening to a fairy story, 
or to a modem rivalry of the miracle of the loaves 
and fishes. 

For this inventor permission was obtained to 
land his apparatus in Havre, free of duty ; and 
there the matter ended, because the machine 



168 ABOUT MY FIRST TEAR IN PARIS- 

stopped working in America, and refused ever 
to resume its marvelous operations. 

One of tlie Yankees, thougli not one of tlie 
impecunious, was Mr. Cyrus W. Field. He 
spent much time at my house, in his efforts to 
secure a concession from the French government 
of the right to land a submarine cable on the 
French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. 

My interest in this matter was very strong. 
While it was still pending, I left Paris for a few 
weeks' sojourn at Biarritz, the imperial sea- 
bathing village. M. Mocquard was there with 
the empress, and I wrote to him on the subject, 
urging him, if possible, to let me have the con- 
cession for Mr. Field at once. 

Mocquard's position as Napoleon's right-hand 
man, his mouthpiece, his confidential adviser, 
was well known. To apply to him was as good 
as, or better than, to apply to the emperor him- 
self. 

With his never-failing courtesy, Mocquard 
expressed to me his regret at not being able to 
respond to my desire. He wrote, — 



ABOUT MY FIRST YEAR IN PARIS. 1G9 

" I must, before writing to Paris, confer about 
this matter with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, 
now at Biarritz. Repose in me the care of 
giving it an active impulsion. Believe in my 
affectionate sentiments. 

" MOCQUAED." 

I had frequent opportunities of observing the 
peculiar neiwousness of Mr. Field's tempera- 
ment, superinduced, no doubt, by his exciting 
labors. 

I remember one day when we were driving 
about fi-om one Ministere to another, receiving 
disheartening answers from all (for people were 
then disposed to look upon the whole business as 
a chimera, and on its projector as an amiable 
lunatic), how amused I was with Mr. Field's 
eccentricity. 

While discussing the glories of his pet scheme 
with great volubility in English, he would repeat- 
edly interrupt himself to punch the astonished 
driver in the back, and ejaculate the one word 
Alle3 — "go on!" 

The man was already racing his horses at their 
15 



170 ABOUT MY FIRST YEAR IN PARIS. 

full speed, but Mr. Field's eagerness far out- 
stripped their sliodden heels. 

The style of the utterance was somewhat this : 

" I tell you it is not a mad idea." [Punch — • 
Allez /] " The day is not far distant when yon 
will see the two countries joined." [Punch 
— Allez I^ "Just think of it! Instantaneous 
communication between London and New 
York!" [Punch— ^ZZ^s/] 

The scene was brought to a farcical climax 
when the driver, impatient at last beyond endur- 
ance, turned around in his seat and mumbled in 
that tone of suppressed rage common to the 
French and English subordinate when angry, — 

"^A ga I vous m^embetez d la fin ! " — " Come 
now ! you pester me, at last ! " 

This mild protest against the punches and the 
reiterated allez., Mr. Field did not take the pains 
to notice, if he even understood. 

When he was just on the point of receiving 
the concession, Mr. Field discovered that a mis- 
take had been made in a date, — purposely, as it 
afterward appeared. 

"The date is wrong," said honest Mr. Field. 



ABOUT MY FIRST TEAR IN PARIS. 171 

" I can not sign a petition which states tliat I 
shall be in Paris on that date." 

" I know that yon will be gone, Monsienr," 
said the official, blandly, " bnt as a matter of 
form it was necessary that the date shonld be 
thns." 

" But I shall be on the ocean at that time," 
said Mr. Field. 

" Wliere yon will," rejoined the official, shrug- 
ging his shoulders. " It does not matter. Sign, 
all the same." 

"ISTo," said the American gentleman, with 
noble simplicity, " I can not sign. Who knows 
but I may be lost at sea on this trip ? In that 
case I could not bear the thought that almost 
my last act in Europe was to indorse a false- 
hood." 

The concession was obtained at last, however, 
and Mr. Field proved the feasibility of his 
scheme. 

Among the numerous applicants for another 
kind of favor — the obtaining of a contract — was 
a person who now " enjoys " a somewhat unemd- 



172 ABOUT MY FIRST l^AR IN PARIS. 

able reputation from having had a price set on 
his head by the American government just after 
the death of Lincoln. I allude to Mr. Beverly 
Tucker, whose term of office as United States 
Consul at Liverpool had just expired, and who 
was now in Paris for the j^^^i'P^^® ^^ working 
w^hat he joyously but erroneously quoted as his 
"gold mine." 

In other words, he hoped to obtain a contract 
for supplying beef to that portion of the French 
army then operating in China. 

A circumstance here unnecessary to relate 
led the voluble Southerner to implore my assis- 
tance in the matter. In a weak moment I con- 
sented, and writing to M. Mocquard obtained a 
letter of audience for myseK and (alas, for 
French ignorance of a patronymic so distinguish- 
ed!) for my pro tern, protege, M. Beweely 
Tuke! 

To make my folly complete I had consented to 
act on this occasion in the somewhat undignified 
capacity of interpreter, as Mr. Tucker was unable 
to master more than half a dozen words of 
French. 



ABOUT MY FIRST TEAR IJV PARTS. 173 

On the day appointed for tlie audience "^e 
drove to the Tuileries, and were admitted to the 
presence of the Chef du Cabinet. 

I could not have conceived it possil)le that a 
man of Beverly Tucker's years, — one who had 
so recently held a somewhat important post in 
England, a person of considerable consequence, 
no doubt, in the South, — would be so completely 
overthrown by the august presence of M. Moc- 
quard. 

Koyalty itself never should have abashed 
an American gentleman thus ; and Mocquard, 
important as he was, was not royalty at least. 

Tucker's self-possession immediately deserted 
him, and during the entire interview he never 
once recovered it. Xaturally of a florid com- 
plexion, with sandy hair and fiery red beard, 
his tinge now deepened into a gorgeous scarlet. 
I was almost frightened myself when I looked at 
him, — not that I was awed by Atocquard, but 
that I feared Tucker would presently fall into 
an apoplectic fit. 

Mocquard's cabinet was immediately contigu- 
ous to that of the emperor, on the ground floor 
15* 



174 ABOUT MT FIB8T TEAR IN PAIU8. 

of tlie Palace of tlie Tuileries, looking out upon 
tlie English Garden which the emperor had re- 
cently cut off from the public inclosure for the 
exclusive use of the imperial family, — an act, 
by-the-way, much to the annoyance of the Paris- 
ians, who looked upon the Tuileries, every 
square foot of it, as the natural play-ground of 
the children of France, the rendezvous of the 
becapped honne with her soldier-spark, the home 
of the coco-vendor, the land of the marchande 
dejplaisirs. 

Gazing out upon the floral beauties which 
smiled thus at our feet, staring amazedly at the 
antique glories of upholstery and fresco which 
the room afforded, my companion, for the first 
time in my acquaintance with him, became thor- 
oughly oblivious of his " gold mine," and of the 
presence of the person whose capital of influ- 
ence — not money — was to work the treasure. 

It was not until I recalled him to a sense of 
where he was, by repeatedly pronouncing the 
secretary's name, that he became conscious of the 
gTeat breach of etiquette he was committing by 
his gauche and oblivious manner. 



ABOUT MY FIRST YEAR IN PARIS. 175 

Then began the embarrassment and the red- 
ness ; and on the part of the secretary an impa- 
tience and dislike of this beefy-looking man 
whom he evidently considered a boor, wliich 
showed me I had a delicate part to play. 

The matter of the "gold mine" explained, M. 
Mocquard answered that it was something which 
did not. come within his province, and that all he 
could do for Mr. Tucker was to give him letters 
of introduction to the head officials of those 
Ministeres who " occupied themselves " with con- 
tracts and sliipments of stores. 

This in itself was a great favor, and when I 
explained it to Mr. Tucker he was so very grate- 
ful for it that he took upon himself to use four 
out of the six French words he knew. 

They were these, dropped slowly, and with 
dire emphasis on the last one, — 

"«/^ — remercie — voire — excellence'''^ — (I — thank 
— your — excellency). 

Here was a bit of insolent ignorance ! 

Mocquard, the life-long friend of the empe- 
ror, — the last and best-beloved lover of his 
mother, Queen Hortense, — the pet of the em- 



176 ABOUT MY FIRST YEAR IN PARIS. 

press — Commander in the order of tlie Legion 
of Honor, — cJief of the cabinet, — to whom the 
emperor had offered eveiy title fi-om duke to 
baron, and who had refused all to retain the sim- 
ple, illustrious, and, as he thought, world-known 
name of MocQrAPjD, — to be addressed by the 
ianal and mediocre title of " excellency," by an 
unpleasant American with ill manners and a red 
face ! 

It was like a slur thrown on the device of the 
Bohans. 

J^oy ne^uis. King, I can not. 

Prince ne daigne. Prince, I deign not. 
Hoharij je suis I Rohan, I am ! 

Again came the fatal phrase, "e/e — remerde 
— voire — excellence^ 

" Tell him I am no ^ excellency ! ' " said the 
indignant Mocquard to me, haughtily rising to 
put an end to the interview. 

Alas ! Tucker heeded not, and again, — 

"«/^ — reinercie — " 

^'Diabler^ ejaculated Mocquard, stamping his 
foot ; " he pesters me ! " 



ABOUT MY FIRST TEAR IN PARIS. 177 

I edged my unfortunate compatriot out of tlie 
presence as expeditiously as possible, and when 
Tre Avere again in the carriage, I asked Mr. 
Tucker why he had not taken my hint, at the 
same time explaining how very annoying it was 
to Mocquard to be called " excellency." 

" Oh, sho ! " said this perfectly self-complacent 
son of the sunny South, " that's all gammon ! 
He liked it, never tell me ! They all hke it. I 
tell you it tickles 'em to be called excellencies, 
these Frenchmen." 

I explained the peculiar nature of this case, 
but to no purpose. The obtuseness of this really 
kind-hearted but stupid " chivalrous " person was 
very amusing. 

Our fii'st visit, after leaving Mocquard, was to 
the Ministry of the Marine, where a polite but 
imperative " impossible," from the lips of M. 
Dupuy de Lome effectually closed up Mr. 
Beverly Tucker's " gold mine," which was never 
heard of more. 

But it is not alone the Yankee inventor or 
would-be contractor who comes before the throne 



178 ABOUT MY EIRST TEAM IN PABIS, 

of Louis Xapoleon. American authors and pub- 
lishers are also much in the habit of courting 
imperial notice. 

To what an extent this is done, few people in 
this country are aware ; because, as a rule, ^sith 
most rare exceptions, these efforts to obtain 
notice from Kapoleon or Eugenie fail utterly of 
accomplishing any thing. 

Once in a while an American author or pub- 
lisher gets a letter of praise or a present of 
jewelry ; but even iu that case it by no means 
follows that the work is really valued by the 
emperor or empress. The letter or the present 
may be a whim, or it may be a piece of pohcy. 

I recall the case of a well-known pubhsher 
who sent the emperor the most beautiful speci- 
men of the bookmaker's art on which my eyes 
ever feasted, — a Worcester's Dictionary, printed 
on satin paper, soft as a baby's cheek, bound gor- 
geously LQ green morocco decked with gold, with 
the imperial arms and cipher dextrously inserted 
at every available point, gilt-edged, perfumed, — 
a very triumph in its way. 

Ai'rived at the palace, this book carelessly 



ABOUT MY FIRST YEAR IX PARIS. 179 

knocked about from one room to another, cared 
for by nobody ; nntil, feeling sorry for it as if it 
were a living thing, I one day asked why it was 
so ill-treated. 

^^Ah, DicOjle ! " said M. Mocqnard, impatiently, 
" these things pester us. I, for one, wish people 
would sto]3 sending them. If you want it, you 
can hare it." 

"But will not the emperor object to my hav- 
ing taken it ? " 

^^Parhleu ! " said the secretary, shrugging his 
shoulders, and laughing with a manner half di oil, 
half contemptuous, " Avhat does the Emperor of 
France care for Woochestaire Sauce's Dictlon- 
airer' 

This case is not related because there is any 
thuig out of the common in it. Quite the con- 
trary. It chanced to be the first of several 
eleojant books which were freelv given to me, 
which came to the Tuileries in the same way. 

Xearly all of these were fi-om ^\jnerican au- 
thors or pubhshers, though a few were from 
English som*ces, and, it is easy to conceive, were 
the centre of many a fond hope, and prepared 



ISO ABOUT MY FIEST TEAR IN PARIS. 

at great expense of time, labor, and money, for 
their special purpose. 

How little those who devised them imagined 
that their carefully prepared gifts would find no 
better fate than that of being given again to his 
friends by the amiable Mocquard ! 




xm. 



ABOUT MOCqUARD. 




OR ten years or more, Jean Mocqnard 
wrote nearly every word that was spoken 
from the throne of Louis Napoleon, and 
penned every official document which issued 
from that cabinet on which the eyes of Europe 
were centered. 

Vehemently as the emperor would no doubt 
deny such an assertion, it is very nearly certain 
that by far the greater portion of La Vie de 
Cesar was indited by the veinous hand of the old 
French lawyer, Mocquard. 

"Writing was his passion, — at once his labor 
and liis relaxation. 

My first acquaintance with him was in the 
year 1857. He was then very busy wi'iting his 
novel " Jessie," and, like many other even more 
16 (181) 



182 ABOUT MOGQUAMD. 

illustrious authors, he was glad enough to obtain 
an "idea" from any source, however humble. 
For this reason it was no extraordinary thing for 
him to solicit an interview with me, from time 
to time, for the pui-pose of reading what he had 
written, obtaining my judgment on it, and then 
questioning me in regard to what I considered 
the most natural sequence to the story as it ran. 
Perhaps this was an undue honor for " one of 
my age " ; but the secret of it no doubt lay in 
Mocquard's opinion that my knowledge of dra- 
matic effect might prove of advantage to one 
who, like himself, w^as seeking the play-wright's 
honors as well as those of the novelist. 

" Tell me all about the American theatre," he 
would say ; " make me to know some details of 
the Yankee camaraderier 

His novel " Jessie," which had a most extraor- 
diiiary sale, was founded in part upon incidents 
which I related to him as having occurred in the 
history of my sister. 

The reader of "Jessie" will remember the 
episode of the Southern planter, who, in love 
with the actress, sends her as a present, two 
negro slaves. 



ABOUT MOGQUABD. 183 

Jessie replies to this wooer (wlio tells her that 
the bondmen are not so fettered as he) to this 
effect : 

"I accept your gift only to bestow fi-eedom 
on your serfs. They shall have their liberty, — 
keep yours." 

I well remember the enthusiasm with which 
Mocquard received this bit of childish reminis- 
cence. How he clapped his hands together, 
exclaiming, — 

"And this was your sister? You may be 
proud, oui! She aided the cause of liberty, 
pardieu ! Jessie shall do as much." 

" Jessie " was translated into every modern lan- 
guage, selling by thousands of copies in every 
civilized country of the world. 

There can be no doubt that this success was 
due less to the merits of the book than to the ex- 
alted position of the author. Every body wanted 
to read a work ^Titten by the chief of the empe- 
ror's cabinet. 

Mocquard ignored this fact completely, and 
behoved that the wonderful sale of the novel was 
entirely due to its merits, which he frankly con- 
fessed to me he considered as hora ligne. 



184 ABOUT MOCQUARD. 

Altliongli my own opinion of this particular 
work was scarcely so flattering, Mocqnard's high 
literary ability was nnqnestionable. This ability 
was best displayed in his plays. 

The best known of these is one which had 
an immensely long "run," though the subject is 
that threadbare one, now, alas ! no longer pecu- 
liar to French literature, which is suflEiciently 
indicated by the title of the play, "Za Fausse 
Adultere?'^ 

Another of Mocqnard's plays, "Z<^ Tireuse de 
CarteSj"^ is known to the American public as 
" Cramea, the Jewish Mother," another transla- 
tion of it being dubbed " The Woman in Ked." 
This play was written at the time of the abduc- 
tion of the Jewish child Mortara, and has that 
incident as a plot. ^ 

Still another, a garbled translated version of 
which was played by Miss Bateman, and called 
" E-osa Gregorio," was ^'Les Fiances d^AlbanoP 

In this play a direct appeal was made to the 
chivalrous sentiments of honor of the French. 
It was brought out very soon after the attempted 
assassination of the emperor, as he was entering 



ABOUT MOCqUARD. 185 

the opera-house, and in it an actor was marie to 
utter these words to a murderer, — 

" Begone ! you are a coward, — for an assassin 
is always a cowardr 

A line which " brought down the house " very 
successfully, particularly on the night of the 
first representation, when the emperor and em- 
press were present. Both Napoleon and Euge- 
nie bowed in response to the hearty cheering, 
which had but one signification, — abhorrence 
of the attempted crime and satisfaction at its 
failure. 

Mocquard's name was not given as the author 
of these plays. 

The Drama is a powerful lever with which 
to move the mass; and when some pet bit of 
policy was entertained by the imperial cabinet, 
Mocquard produced a play in which the same 
appeared, " tried it on " the people, and if it was 
favorably received, adopted it. 

Americans would think it rather strange, if, be- 
fore purchasing Russian America, the Executive 
at Washington had caused such an incident to be 
inserted in a play for the purpose of seeing how 
16* 



186 ABOUT MOGQUARD. 

it worked with the mass ; but it would seem that 
in some things a democratic government dares 
be more despotic than despotism itseK. 

It was, therefore^ wholly for state reasons that 
Mocquard denied himself the satisfaction of hear- 
ing his name announced on " first nights" as aji- 
thor of the piece " which we have had the honor 
of presenting before you," and transferred all 
the glory and part of the money to Monsieur 
Victor Sejour, a professional dramatist, who was 
undoubtedly Mocquard's skillful Gollaborateur. 

Mocquard's mode of composition was very 
curious. If an idea struck him at any moment 
he would stop all else to note it down. He has 
told me that it frequently happened to him to 
make the emperor wait for state business while 
he was jotting down ideas for his next new 
play, or devising some touching love-situation 
for "Jessie." 

On one occasion I saw him stop eating his 
noonday breakfast, and, with his mouth full of 
chicken, rush over to his writing-table, seize a 
quill, and hurriedly pen-photograph some bril- 
liant thought ; then, throwing back his head, and 



ABOUT MOCQUAJRD. 1S7 

strilving a tragic attitude, with the drumstick of 
the chicken in one hand and the manuscript in 
the other, he declaimed it aloud and cried out 
to. me, — 

"i^'A Men, eh hienf what do you think of 
that f That's Tacitus, isn't it % " 

Tacitus was to him the great model. 

Mocquard derived a considerable income from 
his plays, and made a sum which was no baga- 
telle out of his percentage on the sales of 
" Jessie." 

In person this astute Frenchman was of me- 
dium height, and of excessive leanness . both of 
face and figure. His hair was scant and gray, 
but to the day of his death his eye retained its 
wonderful brightness and his speech its fluent 
grace. 

He was excessively fond of fast horses, and one 
of his favorite amusements was to indulge in 
private races with those of his fiiends who had 
" some trotteiiTS,^^ as he expressed it, which could 
compete with his own. 

He frequently begged me to come to the Bois 
de Boulogne to witness such friendly matches 



188 ABOUT MOGQUABD. 

between himself and Mr. Charles Astor Bristed, 
but as they were appointed for an itnpleasantly 
early hour in the morning I was obliged to de- 
cline. « 

Mocquard had three children, — one a lawyer 
of no particular eminence, who is still practising 
in Paris ; the second, an officer in a regiment of 
Spa/iis, stationed in Algeria; and a daughter 
married into an immensely wealthy roturiere 
family, the wife of Mr. Eaimbault, a gentleman 
w^ho distinguished himself in the summer of 
1867 by saving the life of the Czar by striking a 
pistol from the hands of the Pole who attempted 
to assassinate the imperial Russian. 

Mocquard's salary was nominally only five 
thousand dollars a year ; but that he had other 
sources of income is evident from the fact that 
he left a fortune of many millions of francs. 

He occupied a magnificent suite of parlors in 
the Pue de Kivoli, directly opposite the Palace of 
the Tuileries, during the winter months ; and 
when the court was at St. Cloud, a charming 
cottage in the park of Montretout was provided 
for this adviser of the emperor. At the palaces 



ABOUT MOGQUAJRD. 189 

of Compiegne and Fontainebleau, and at tlie 
imperial villas at Plombieres and Biarritz, he 
had rooms adjoining those of his majesty. 

* In early years he must have been a very at- 
tractive man, and even at the age of seventy his 
wit was fresher and more sparkling than that of 
any Frenchman I ever met, which is saying 
much among a nation of heaux esjprits. 

It was well known in France that he had been 
the last lover of the Queen Ilortense, the mother 
of the present emperor ; and this fact, singularly 
enough, was his chief claim for favor with l^a- 
poleon the Third, who, to show his gratitude, 
created him a commander in the Legion of 
Honor, appointed liim chief of the imperial cab- 
inet, as well as private secretary to the emperor, 
and offered him any title he might choose from 
the long list beginning at Prince and ending 
at Yicomte. Titles, however, Mocquard de- 
clined. 

One day, when I was strolling with him in 
the private park of the palace at St. Cloud, he 
stopped suddenly, and, laying his hand on my 
ann, said, with a gravity which was not usual 
with bun, — 



190 ABOUT MOCQUARD. 

^^Mon enfant^ if you were to rack your brain 
forever to find subjects for romances, you could 
invent nothing so marvellous as my life. I have 
suffered privation in every shape, — hunger, 
thirst, and even the want of a bed ; and now look 
at me," and he drew himself up proudly while 
I did so, " I am one of the leading diplomatists 
in Europe, and the friend of un Empereue 1 " 

He swelled his voice proudly on the glorious 
title, and shook his gaunt finger, stretched at 
arm's-length above his head, in a most impressive 
though somewhat theatrical manner. 

Having thus set me to thinking on the strange 
vicissitudes and triumphs which it is the fate of 
some of us to encounter, he suddenly, to my 
intense surprise, burst out into a species of Me- 
phistophelean laughter, and twisting his body 
as though his great mirth was thus distorting it, 
he whispered, hoarsely, — 

" We concoct deviltries enough, he and 1." 

" He " was the Emperor Napoleon. 

1 think this confession was a bubbling over of 
the " deviltries," and almost inadvertently made ; 
but that it was true seems probable enough when 



ABOUT MOGQUABD. 191 

coupled with the fact that half an hour after the 
death of Mocquard the emperor caused seals to 
be placed on all his private secretary's papers, 
that no one, not even his own children, should 
read the history of the "deviltries" until the 
imperial hand had put them into angelic shape. 




xiy. 



JLBOUT HOME LIFE IN PARIS. 




HE home life of Paris is a thing with 
which few Americans ever become 
acquainted. 

The ordinary tomist, who rushes abont from 
one continental city to another, in the headlong 
manner for which Americans are celebrated, re- 
turns to his native land with no more idea of the 
interior life of the Parisian than he would have 
if he had never been abroad. 

Indeed, he not unfrequently jumps to the 
conclusion that there is no home life in Paris 
at alL 

He sees so many people out-doors so continually, 
— sitting on the iron chairs, reading, in the 
Champs Elysees, and on the Boulevards, and 
everywhere, — thronging the streets, gayly at- 
tired, and so evidently bent on pleasure, recrea- 

(192) 



ABOUT HOME LIFE IX PARIS. 193 

tion, not bnsiness, — so many ladies, so many chil- 
dren, so many servants, — a never-intermittin£r 
crowd of strollers and gazers, unmistakably 
French, — that it is no wonder he concludes the 
people of Paris live out of doors, take their meals 
at restaurants, and only go under a roof at bed- 
time. 

It is true that the French have a never-falter- 
ing faith in the beneficence of the open air. In 
pleasant weather, no French mother permits her 
children to remain in-doors. 

Out-doors is the place for children, say the 
Parisians ; and out they go, early in the morning, 
accompanied by nurse, and out they stay till the 
daylight is done, and the darkness faUs (or as 
much darkness as ever falls on the brightly-lighted 
streets of Paris) ; only coming in at meal-times 
for a brief seance about the family-board. 

It is true that the Parisian believes there is 
champagne in the air, and goes out whenever he 
can to quaff it. 

But there are homes in Paris, and in those 
homes families bound together by ties as firm as 
those which hold kith and kin in any land. 
17 



19J: ABOUT HOME LIFE IS PAMIS, 

Parisian houses are, in great part, built of s. 
light cream-colored stone, which is soft when it 
comes from the quany, and is carved and fash- 
ioned by the sculptor-stonemason into a thousand 
beautiful and fantastic shapes, which harden and 
live bj the action of the air. 

The man who carves those fine heads which we 
see ornamenting the cornices of windows in Paris 
buildings, — who fashions the magnificent carya- 
tides who seem to bear on their brawny shoulders 
the weight of the whole structure, — is no mean 
artisan. 

In France, any boy who desires to be a sculptor 
is furnished the instraction of the best masters, 
free of charge. After a certain time has elapsed, 
if he shows extraordinary talent, he is sent by the 
country to Pome. If, on the other hand, it ap- 
pears on trial that he has not genius enough to be 
a sculptor in the highest sense of the word, he 
then faUs back upon the broad field of sculptor 
of stone for the fronts of houses. 

The stone is carved after the house is built, — 
not before, as one would suppose. 

Paris houses generally range in height from six 



ABOUT HOME LIFE IX PABIS. 195 

stories to nine. The gronnd-floor of a French 
house is devoted to the carriage-way, for entrance 
into the court-yard. This yard is at the back, 
and around it are ranged the stables, coach- 
houses, etc. 

On the ground-floor is also situated the apart- 
ment of the concierge, — a sort of janitor, in a 
larger sense. This person receives all letters for 
the dwellers in the house ; instructs callers which 
way to go, and how many flights of stairs there 
are to mount; attends to the letting of vac-ant 
apartments, and is also the most valuable aid in 
Paris to the police, — furnishing that body with 
every uiformation ui regard to the ladies and 
srentlemen abidinjz in the house. 

It is easy to see that the ladies and gentlemen 
aforesaid are very much at the mercy of these 
concierges. 

The result is, that they are profusely feed by 
all ; for if they be not conciliated, they can cause 
one a deal of annoyance in the way of keeping 
back letters, cai*ds, etc., to say nothing of graver 
troubles in connection with the polic-e, whose 
spies they are. 



196 ABOUT HOME LIFE IN PABIS. 

The " jGb-st floor " of the French is after the first 
flight of stairs — not on the ground, as with us. 
This tlie French call the premiere Stage. It is 
naturally the most expensive in the house. 

In Paris houses, looking-glasses are furnished 
the lodger; and in eveiy apartment, however 
small, as many as two, and often three elegant 
mirrors will invariably be found. So also with 
chandeliers. 

Of course, I am speaking now of unfurnished 
rooms. 

Gas is little used chez soi in Paris. The French 
do not like it. They urge a thousand objections 
to it. 

It smokes the furniture, it injures pictures, it 
kills plants (of which the French are very fond, 
always having a number growing in their rooms), 
and lastly (and most important), feminine beauty 
is sorely tried by its glaring, discovering light, 
while it is delightfully softened and enhanced by 
the mellow gleam of waxen tapers. 

The second story is always less expensive than 
the lirst, and the rents go on diminishing as they 
reach the top. 



ABOUT HOME LIFE IN PARIS. 197 

It is no extraordinary tiling to find people of 
poverty, almost verging on starvation, occupying 
the topmost floor of a house on whose lower floors 
dwell millionnaires and titled people. 

Generally, however, these poor apartments are 
reached by a separate staircase, which is also de- 
voted to the uses of the servants of the great per- 
sonages, and further serves as a mode of ingress 
and egress for such necessary creatures as the 
butcher, the baker, the cliarcoal-man, and the 
water-man. 

Though I consider Paris as peculiarly the City 
of Luxury, there is one great luxury (none the 
less luxurious because it is a necessity) in which 
the smallest American to^vn is more luxurious 
than Paris. This is water. Water is scarce 
At Home, in Paris. 

I have heard it said that wine is cheaper than 
water there ; but that is a pleasant fiction. 

"Water is brought to Paris homes every morn- 
ing by men who sell it at two sous a pail. The 
water-cooler is filled for a certain sum. This is 
only water to di-inlv, and to use in cooking; a 
17* 



198 ABOUT HOME LIFE IN PARIS, 

hydrant in the yard furnishes water in limited 
quantities for lavatory purposes. 

If one wants a bath, application may be made 
at a bath-house near by. 

For three francs (sixty sous) a bath-tub will be 
brought, set down in your bed-room, filled with 
hot or cold water, into which perhaps a bag of 
bran has been thrown (a favorite emollient for the 
skin with the French) and your bath is ready. 
But besides this a heater is brought, filled with 
hot and clean towels in abundance. 

Three francs pays for all, as well as for the 
removal of the bath, etc., at the time you 
specify. 

Of course, if you choose to go to one of the 
public bath-houses (in which Paris abounds) all 
this may be had much cheaper. 

The system of household management in 
Paris would no doubt astonish many American 
ladies. 

No "lady," no "gentleman," can go to mar- 
ket. The market-place is altogether the resort 
of the lower orders. 

So long as an effort is made to appear genteel 



ABOUT HOME LIFE IN PARIS. 199 

— no matter on how poor a scale — a servant 
must be sent to the market. 

This is the servant's legitimate field for swind- 
ling. 1^0 policeman can follow her here. If she 
pays fifty sons for a pair of chickens, and chooses 
to put down on her accomit-book that she paid 
seventy-five sous for them, it is no easy matter to 
find out the truth. 

If you were even to so far forget your " lady "- 
hood as to go to the market-woman and inquire, 
she would vow, with slmeks to yourself and le 
hon Dieu to believe her, that the servant-wouaan 
paid exactly what she said she had. 

The explanation is simple. Generally, the 
market-woman has sympathy for the woman of 
her class; with that fierce rage of the French 
lower orders, she hates you for being her supe- 
rior, and is glad your servant can cheat you. 
But particularly, your cook has been her customer 
for years, — will be, in all probability, for years to 
come. If you choose to come to the market and 
buy for yourself, she and all the other market- 
women will form a league against you, and cheat 
you worse than the cook does. 



200 ABOUT HOME LIFE IN PARIS. 

This is one of the things that make marketing 
in Paris nnduly expensive. 

Another thing which makes it so, is, that, 
store-room being ahnost an impossibility, it is 
difficult to buy anything by the quantity, as flour 
or sugar by the barrel, butter by the firkin, etc. 
These necessaries must be bought by di-iblets, at 
an unduly exorbitant price, to which is added the 
illegitimate percentage of the cook. 

Another curious custom with the French is in 
the mode of engaging servants. > 

]^o Frenchwoman of the proper sort will be 
satisfied with a written recommendation from a 
servant ; such are too easily procured to be relia- 
ble : she must see the servant's last mistress, and 
make of her every imaginable inquiry. 

Thus it is that people who are as far apart in 
the social system as Herschel is from the Sun in 
the astronomical, are swept together by the incon- 
trovertible law of custom every time a servant is 
changed. 

Canaille may call on Duchess ; yes, and, what 
is more, question that duchess, pin her in a corner, 
ask her if she is quite certain she is telling the 



ABOUT HOME LIFE IN PARIS. 201 

truth about her ex-servant ; and Duchess will and 
must — without loss of temper — answer every 
question. 

If she be not altogether too fashionable a 
duchess she will call, in her turn, when she 
wants a servant, and ask Canaille if the reasons 
why they separated were derogatory to the 
servant's character. 

A cm-ious type of French servitor in Paris 
homes is i\\Q frotteicr, or floor-rubber. 

Carpets are fi-equently altogether dispensed 
wifh in French homes ; though the rich people 
indulge in them, it is as in any other luxury. 

That a carpet should be a necessity, is to the 
French a ridiculous bit of Xew-World nonsense. 

Even the rich dispense with them in dining- 
rooms ; and the well-rubbed, shining oaken floors 
make a very pretty appearance. 

The frotteuT charges a franc or two an hour 
for liis labor, furnishing his own w-ax, with a 
great yellow lump of wluch he proceeds to rub 
the floor, as a woman might do with a bit of soap 
preparatory to scrubbing it. 



202 ABOUT HOME LIFE IN PARIS. 

Then, like her in some degree again, he takes a 
dry scrubbing-brush with a leathern strap across 
the to]3, and (unlike her now), inserting hi^foot 
in the loop, begins rubbing away lustily, singing 
like a good fellow the while, and using his disen- 
gaged foot for the purpose of preserving his 
equilibrium. "When one leg is tired, he alter- 
nates ; and so to the end. 

When the floor shines like a mirror, and 
the frotteur's face likewise, you will hear his 
voice at your bedi'oom-door, singing out, in jolly 
numbers, — 

" Madame, will she have the obligeance to pay 
her good-frotteur^ if you please ? " 

Many ladies, who keep no man-servant, and 
who shrink fi'om the expense of a froUeur (for 
the French are very economical), exact that the 
floor-rubbing shall be done by the maid-servant. 
But this is generally objected to by the poor little 
grisettes. 

The very first question they ask before entering 
a new service, is, " Is your maid expected to do 
the floor-rubbing ? " They say physicians tell them 
it is bad exercise for women ; and no doubt it is. 



ABOUT HOME LIFE IN PARI8. 203 

The Movement-Cure advocates will be glad 
to learn that it is said the legs of the frotteurs, 
developed by tliis curious work, are perfect in 
form, and that these honest fellows are in de- ' 
mand as models by the artists. 

So floor-rubbing is good for something, — be- 
sides the floors. 

It is certainly very bad for the carpet-trade. 

Charcoal is altogether used for cooking pur- 
poses in France; and wood is used to heat the 
apartments, to the almost entire exclusion of coal, 
which the Parisians hold in abhorrence. 

They contend that coal ruins furniture, spoils 
one's complexion, aud chokes up the lungs with 
its gritty particles. 

I have in vain represented to French people 
that the Americans were a healthy race, though 
they burned coal, as a rule, in their cities ; and 
that the great wood-fires of the French, in their 
old-fashioned fireplaces with andirons, though 
very poetic, and very cheerful to look at, give 
out a wof uUy poor heat for the money. 



204 ABOUT HOME LIFE m PARIS. 

To those Americans who have never been to 
Paris, it may no doubt seem a curious thing that 
rich people should live together in what we call, 
even at its best, a tenement-house, — that is to 
say, on separate floors. 

l^evertheless, the system is an excellent one, 
and far preferable to the life in hotels and board- 
ing-houses, which is so common in this country 
in the large cities. 

A parlor, a dining-room, four or ^yq bedrooms, 
a kitchen, and servant's room may easily be ob- 
tained in Paris at almost any rent desired — sub- 
ject, of course, to such considerations as the 
elegance of the ajp^artement, the location of the 
house, and the location of the suite of rooms 
ioi the house. 

The floors are complete in all their appoint- 
ments ; and thus the strictest privacy is insured. 

Indeed, so free are the Parisians from the pry- 
ing eyes of their co-lodgers, that it is possible to 
live twenty years in a house and never meet a 
single occupant of it, except, perhaps, on the 
staircase (common ground), where a slight bow 
passes, — even between utter strangers. 



ABOUT HOME LIFE IN PAHIS. 205 

For my own part, I sincerely wish the prejudice, 
in our country, against these houses could be 
removed, and that the abominable system of 
boarding-houses might be broken up, — a system 
which is directly conducive to idle habits, gossip- 
ing, and other evils, even greater. 

In Paris, only a few, a very few families, 
occupy houses to themselves. Those who do, 
live for the most part in the Faubourg Saint- 
Germain, the quarter aristocratic jpar excellence 
of the gay city. 

These are the noble families who look upon 
the present emperor as a vile parvemi^ and pray 
that the day may not be long deferred when the 
perfumed and spotless Bourbon lily shall chase 
from sovereign banners the buzzing and stinging 
bee of the Eonapartes. 

Still, in the modern and more bustling parts 
of the town, some grand private houses may be 
seen, — even outstripping in grandeur, and in 
gilding, and in glittering newness, the solemn 
and severe old homes of France's "fine flower" 
of nobility. These lie along the avenue of the 
Champs Elysees, the boulevard de I'Imperatrice, 
18 



206 ABOUT HOME LIFE IN PARIS. 

and other Ilaiissmann streets, at whose fairy-like 
splendors and Aladdin-like architecture old Paris 
looks aghast. 

Here dwell the successful speculators at the 
Bourse, the humbug railroad men, the hundred- 
and-one shrewd fellows who have made money 
by hanging at Louis Napoleon's heels, and receiv- 
ing kicks or hints as the imperial mood dictated, 
and who have gathered a goodly store of treasure 
on occasions of hints, that when a kick came they 
might not be quite prostrated. 

Such is a Parisian private house, — in France 
dignified by the name of " hotel," while a public- 
house, an inn, is also a " hotel," as with us. 

This similarity of titles has led to more than 
one amusing mistake. 

It is common with families of the old nobility 
(and new wealth has not yet dared to imitate this), 
to affix the family name over the gates of the 
family hotel, there to spell out its scorn unto 
all plebeian passers-by, — imperial and other. 

One day a newly-arrived American, on the 
lookout for lodgings, came across a stately house, 
over whose grim portals was to be seen, in time- 



ABOUT HOME LIFE IN PABI8. 207 
worn letters of stone, tlie inscription, " ITotel de 

LA EoCHEJAQUELm." 

"That's my style," said he; and, beating a 
true republican devil-may-care tattoo with the 
ponderous knocker, inquired of the powdered 
and perfumed laqiiais what they charged for 
board ! 

Finding there was a mistake some where, he 
turned away with a " pshaw ! " for the footman's 
stupidity. 

By and by he met a friend, to whom he re- 
counted what had happened. 

The friend laughed, and explained the true 
state of the case. De La Eochejaquelin was one 
of the most aristocratic family names in France, 
and this was their city residence. 
• " Confound my stupidity ! " said Americus. 

" Go to the Hotel du Louvre, if you want 
stylish board," said his friend. 

"What? Oh, — ha, ha! Thank you, — no 
you don't ! I'm not going to ask for board at 
Louis Kap's palace ! " 

The French family-circle is, of that of all 



208 ABOUT HOME LIFE IN PARIS. 

nations, the most compact, the most inseparable. 
Marriage dissoh'es no ties, but only begets new 
ones ; and death is merely a separation for a time. 

The Eoman Catholic belief is beautiful for 
the simple, trustful faith it inspires. Souls are 
prayed for cheerfully and hopefully, masses 
sung, candles burnt : the one gone before is not 
a sad and vague recollection, but a vivid, ever- 
present spiritual reality. 

The evening interior of a true French family 
is irresistibly quaint. 

The French are fonder of innocent games than 
any people I know. The whole family and their 
visitors will play dominoes, or loto, or any of their 
innumerable games of chance, for hours on a 
stretch,- with a pari of a few sons, — sometimes 
honbons, — in default of these, beans. 

When company is absent, and other members 
of the family are busy, then shall you chance 
to see one solitary member playing a game of 
" patience " by himself. 

OTd Frenchmen and women are often an ex- 
tremely droll study, — simple^ honest, and behind 
the age. 



ABOUT HOME LIFE IN PARIS. 209 

This type is pictured constantly on the stage, 
— on canvas at expositions, — in books by the 
best authors, — and though the subject is treated 
humorously, there is always a tender vein of 
sentiment for them displayed. 

Of this class was le capitaine Bitterlin, a 
purely fictitious personage, in whose quiet adven- 
tures, as they were printed from week to week, 
the empress became so interested, that, after 
she left Paris for the sea-side, the emperor 
telegraphed her that Captain Bitterlin was 
dead. 

The Captain Bitterlin was a puffy, pompous, 
ridiculous old fellow, — an ex-ofiicer, whose glories 
lay altogether in the past ; one of those funny old 
militaires who can be seen any day in a Parisian 
cafe^ drinlving sugar aiid water, and rattling 
dominoes for hours and hours together, and 
tending to confirm the American observer in 
the belief that the French have no homes. 
^Perhaps this poor old fellow has none; and 
such being the case, he might be doing a great 
many worse things than sitting in an open cafe, 
playing dominoes, and sipping orange-fiower 
18* 



210 ABOUT HOME LIFE IN PARIS. 

sugar- water with a comrade, — old, pompous, 
and respectable, like himself. 

If there be several sons in a French family, 
parental hearts will be sorely tried if one at least 
do not become a priest ; and he who has taken 
holy orders is indeed a mother's pet. 

No contact with the hateful world of money- 
getting for him ; no marriage, with its new loves, 
to partly engross him, now ; this dear son may be 
almost constantly at his mother's side, to drive 
with her at the Bois de Boulogne — if this be not 
beyond their means — to walk out with her, to 
shop with her, to read with her, and sit on her 
footstool and count the beads of his rosary while 
she works at home. 

We can well understand the effeminate part 
which Monsieur I'Abbe has always played in 
history. 

I knew a young abbe well, whose chief pro- 
ficiency in life was with his needle, — the result 
of living almost constantly with women. 

It was a strange thing to me to see him sit 
down with the ladies, and gravely draw out his 
needlework and his thimble and scissors, and go 
to work with the rest. 



ABOUT HOME LIFE IN PARIS. 211 

His chief passion was for worsted work ; and 
some of the prettiest things in his mother's draw- 
ing-room were embroidered by him. He resented 
the idea of this being unmanly work. 

" Other men paint on canvas with a brush," 
he said ; " I paint on canvas with a needle. I 
see not too much the difference." 

With his long black-cloth dress, buttoned up 
to the throat, and his neat low shoes and black 
stockings, his beardless face, and his worsted- 
work, he always seemed to me like a pure 
and good woman — above the worldly vanities 
and wickednesses of coquetry and dress — intent 
on nothing but religion and the needle. 

Every body has heard of the French jpot-au-feu. 

The making of this dish must be a national 
secret. 

Give an Irish cook a finer piece of beef, more 
vegetables, plenty of every tiling, and a cookery- 
book open at the place, and she will turn you 
out a potful of watery, greasy soup, and a huge 
" hunk " of stringy, tough-boiled beef. 

But the glories of ihe j[)ot-au-feu, as made by 
French hands, have been sung before my day. 



212 ABOUT HOME LIFE IN PARIS. 

Kothing more deliciously appetizing than that 
soup can ever be tasted by mortal lips ; and no 
more succulent slice than the crisp, pinliish, 
boiled beef can be garnished with tomato-sauce. 

I dined with the abbe's mother every Sunday 
for several years: she dined with me every 
Thursday during the same period. 

Every Sunday of their lives they had the same 
unvarying, delicious, though plain dinner; their 
parents and grand-parents had so dined before 
them; and who can doubt that their children 
will follow the custom ? 

The dinner I commend to housekeepers. It 
began with the soup, — the delicious soup of the 
jpot-au-feu; then came the very boiled beef which 
had made that soup, but which cut as firm and as 
tender under the mother's knife as a young turkey. 
Tomato-sauce with this, and boiled maccaroni in 
Italian style. 

Then, O iN'antes ! one of your round, wliite, fat, 
perfumed poulets gras ! — the roundest, ten- 
derest, sweetest morsels that ever trod on drum- 
sticks. 

Why is it, when I see Mademoiselle Tostee, 



ABOUT HOME LIFE IN VARIS. 213 

with her plump shoulders, and white arms, I 
think always of the Nantaise poulets I used to 
eat at those Sunday dinners ? 

Salad with the poulet; dressed, — ah, I kiss 
my fingers ! — there are no adequate adjectives. 

A tiny white cream-cheese, a cup of excellent 
coffee, a thimbleful of cura9oa for the gentlemen, 
if they like it, — and a delicious French dinner 
— chez soi enfamille — is over. 




XV. 



ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PARIS. 

I^OTI have often wondered that Mr. Thack- 
J WM eray, whom I met on many occasions in 
English society in Paris, should never 
have employed his caustic pen in delineating 
some of the curious phases of that society. It 
is not with the bold purpose of doing what 
Mr. Thackeray left undone that this chapter is 
written, but rather with the modest purpose of 
suggesting what he might have done with a 
theme so rich in the elements of pathos and 
humor, — at once so ludicrous and so saddening 
in its exhibitions. 



English society in Paris is composed of two 
classes, which meet and mingle at parties and at 
balls, at church and at Galignani's reading-rooms. 

(314) 



ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PARIS. 215 

The first and less important class, numerically, 
is made up of persons who are spoken of as 
"French-English;" and among these are some 
of the principal editors of that Galignani's 
Alesseriger^ newspaper, which is universally con- 
ceded to be dear in point of cost and cheap in 
point of political and literary importance. The 
French-English are not necessarily a hybrid race, 
though I know of many marriages between a 
Frenchman and an Englishwoman, and vice versa, 
where the childi*en, and even the parents, are 
classed under that head; but more frequently 
a French-Englishman is the son of an Eng- 
lish father and English mother, but was bom 
on French soil, and has lived in France all his 
life. 

l^ecessarily, this person speaks French " like a 
native," of which fact he is rather ashamed, so 
proud is he of being of English parentage. 

He strongly affects the society of those whom 
he is pleased to call his country-people, and when 
among the French actually attempts to speak in- 
correctly, so desirous is he of at once establishing 
what should have been his proud birthright, but 



216 ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PARIS. 

which (on account of his parents' change of resi- 
dence), unhappily was not. 

Apart from this foible, the French-Englishman, 
for all social purposes, is far in advance of his 
unalloyed "countrymen," joining to their solidity 
of character a channing piquancy and attractive- 
ness of conversation which is generally condemned 
by the dubious qualifying word, " Frenchy." 

The second class may, in contradistinction to 
the first, perhaps be called the English-English, — 
the English, pure and simple ; that is, as pure as 
men and women of high life generally are, and 
as simple as rampant aristocrats must certainly 
be. 

These are the travelling class, " doing the con- 
tinent ; " the " run-over-to-Paris-f or-a-day-or-two,- 
just-to-cheer-you-up-a-bit,-my-boy " class; and that 
other widespread class, whose members, pining 
after London, still live on in Paris, and will 
probably continue so to do until the debtor's 
prison in England becomes, like Clichy, a tiling 
belonging to other and more barbarous days. 

It is perhaps not very extraordinary that these 
people should carefully conceal their true reason 



ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PARIS. 217 

for avoiding English soil, and ascribe their resi- 
dence in Paris to many potent causes. One of 
the most popular of these excuses is, — 

" The climate, my dear. That English climate 
always gives the captain the rheumatism. Ah, if 
it were not for the climate ! " 

And the climax is a concession to French 
mannerisms, — the shrug. 

I may use " the captain " in a general sense to 
represent that large class of gentlemen to whom 
Fleet Street invariably gives the rheumatism. 

But I mind me of a particular captain, whose 
valorous exploits formed the subject of laughter 
among his acquaintances during many years in 
Paris, and who, no doubt fearful of rheumatism, 
still haunts that part of this vale of tears, the gay 
French capital. 

The captain was a fine-looking, dashing fellow 
of forty or thereabouts, with a meek wife and 
seven children, — about the usual quota for poor 
Englishmen of forty. Curious to know the value 
of the captain's title, and with my mind somewhat 
confused by my American experiences of colonels, 
captains, generals, and the like (before the war of 
19 



218 ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PARIS, 

the rebellion), I asked a titled English lady, at 
whose honse I met him, whether he belonged to 
the army or the na^y. 

" Neither, I believe," she replied ; " I think he 
is — ah — a sort of militia thingnmy." 

The gentleman was to be seen everywhere. !N^o 
court ball without the captain, — no minister's 
fete unattended by the " militia thingumy." 

Did you stroll in the direction of the great 
restaurants in the Palais Royal in quest of 
dinner, there you found the captain, who met 
you by twilight alone, and accosted you in a 
cheery voice, betokening a lightness of spirit 
which you would have given half your fortune to 
possess. 

''All! going into the Trois Freres to dine?" 
asks the captain. And now you fancy you de- 
tect a little tremulousness in the voice. 

You reply, " Yes," and of course add, " "Won't 
you come ? " 

It may be the captain's acceptance is rather 
^ more enthusiastic than you expect from an Eng- 
lishman, but that is no doubt the fashion of the 
militia thingumy. 



ABOUT ENGLIBH SOCIETY IN PABIS. 219 

It may be he eats liis dinner with a certain 
eager haste, which really looks like hunger ; 
but then are you, a mere American, a judge of 
the mess-room manners of English thingumy 
captains ? 

Where the captain lived was a mystery. He 
gave you to understand, in a general way, that it 
was " outside the Barrier," which afforded you 
wide scope for guessing, certainly, as the whole 
empire of France, save the capital, is outside the 
Barrier. 

The captain also mentioned to you that you 
need not be at any trouble to return his calls, as 
he lived nearer you than you did him, — a curious 
computation of distances at which you smiled, 
but which you were willing enough to accept ! 
He was such a jolly, splendid fellow, — so hand- 
some, despite his iron-gray hair, so attractive, and 
apparently so good ! 

What a pity the London climate affected him 
so severely ! 

Wherever he lived, and however, the captain 
invariably managed to be in town for all balls, 



220 ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PARIS. 

dinners, and soirees to which he had procured 
invitations. 

Looking out of my carriage window one even- 
ing, on my way to the Tuileries, I saw the captain 
and his wife getting do^vn from an omnibus at 
the foot of the Cours la Reine, bravely preparing 
to walk the rest of the way (they were going 
where I was), not even able to afford the luxury of 
a fiacre, obliged to take to plebeian omnibuses, 
and then to " Shank's mare." 

Oh, unlucky rheumatism ! 

I am sure the captain and his wife were 
gayer than I was at the ball at the Tuileries. 

The meek little lady was dressed in a frumpy 
style, which immediately stigmatized her as 
oidy another eccentric Englishwoman of wretched 
taste for "the toilet," by the brightly-dressed 
and perfumed beauties who reigned at the ball. 

Tlie captain's scarlet coat was rather faded, 
but that may have been the style in the British 
militia. 

And talk of appetite at dinner ! How did the 
captain manage to dispose of so much supper at 
two o'clock in the morning ? 



ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PARIS. 221 

Bj fasting tlie whole day, perhaps, or the whole 
week, perhaps, or always. 

The direful impecuniosity of this couple was 
one of the most painful things of my whole 
Paris experience, and especially saddening was 
their um*eserved exliibition of it, — airing it. at 
parties, dancing it at balls, and eating it rave- 
nously at dinners. 

Then, too, fresh from money-grubbing America, 
it struck me as strange that the captain should 
receive invitations to these social festivities, being, 
as was quite evident, altogether unable to recipro- 
cate. 

I heard the explanation one evening, coming 
from a host who disliked him, but who had felt 
himself obliged to invite him to his ball. 

" A pnppy, — a penniless puppy," said the old 
earl, " but a gentleman^ and more's the pity ! " 

Another illustration of this phase of existence 
was furnished in the person of an English lady, 
the widow of a Bombay officer, w^ho had made 
Paris her home for many years, though, like the 
captain's wife, she kept longing for England, 
19* 



222 ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PARIS, 

and within twelve hours' travel of it, never went 
there. 

She was a " fine woman " (a recognizable term), 
content to know her day was over, and only 
anxious to push forward and marry well her 
tw» pretty and modest daughters, who seemed 
to object. 

She had no other title than that of simple 
"mistress," her husband having been "the colo- 
nel." But she had titled relations in London, 
of whom she was constantly talking. 

" My cousin. Sir Ilyppolite," she would say, " is 
the first barrister in England." 

Another lady, and one who was received by the 
very first fashionable set in Paris, was also an 
India officer's widow, and also the mother of 
some handsome daughters. Unable to marry 
them off herself, she had confided them to a titled 
sister — a countess — in London, who finally 
accomplished the task for one of them at least, 
by four seasons of chaperoning at queen's levees 
and horticultural exhibitions. 

These two widowed ladies, the cousin of Sir 
Hy^Dpolite and the sister of the countess, though 



ABOUT EKGLISH SOCIETY IN PARIS. 223 

well acquainted with each other by name, had 
never met ; and it happened to be my fate to 
perform that name-pronouncing ceremony which 
is an imperative preliminary to all fashionable 
acquaintancesliip. 

Mrs. Bombay, cousin to Sir Hyppolite, wished 
to know Mrs. Curry, sister to the countess. 

I performed the name-pronouncijig ceremony, 
and was immediately taken to task for it by 
Mrs. Curry. 

"!N"ot that I object to knowing Mrs. Bombay," 
said Mrs. Curry ; " she has some decent relations ; 
but you actually introduced me to her, — not 
her to me." 

" She is much your senior," I replied. " That 
was sufficient cause for my action. Besides, I 
am an American, and do not distress myself 
about matters of aristocratic precedence." 

"Oh, I don't mind so much for myself," 
answered Mrs. Curry; "but, thank goodness! 
my sister, the countess, did not see it." 
. I then went over to Mrs. Bombay. 

" Handsome woman, that Mrs. Curry," said the 
lady. " I wanted to know her, for her family is 



224 ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IJSf PARIS. 

one of tlie firet in England. But really, for her- 
self personally " (a shrng) — " altogether I slia'n't 
write to Sir Ilyppolite that I've met her." 

The great Sir H^^^polite did not seem so anxious 
in regard to the welfare of Mrs. Bombay and her 
daughters as they would fain have mac!e me, as 
well as the whole of English society in Paris, 
believe. lie, occasionally sent them a letter of 
introduction to some grandee who was passing 
through Paris, which they did not always deliver, 
fearful of an invitation to dinner not to be de- 
clined, and nothing to wear to it when received. 

Once, however, tlie Baroness W , an Eng- 
lish lady who had married a Roman noble, 
sent them an invitation to her ball as a sort of 
response to a letter of introduction of Sir Hj^ 
polite's, which tliey had delivered to her footman. 

By dint of careful retrenchments at home, the 
poor lady managed to get up good-enough tarle- 
tans for ball-dresses for her daughters, — one can 
wear tarletan to a ball, but not to a dinner, — and 
I was greatly pleased by the loveliness of the 
daughters in their cheap attire when I saw them 
enter the ball-room. 



ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY m PABIS. 225 

I was standing near the baroness at the moment, 
and, really interested as I was in the sweetness of 
the girls, I was pained by her frigid reception of 
them. She bowed her head coldly, and bestowed 
upon them a blank, unmeaning stare. 

" We are the cousins of Sir Hyppolite," mm-- 
mured Mrs. Bombay, as if that announcement 
were sufficient to gain them a welcome to Para- 
dise itself. 

"Oh, yes," answered the baroness, languidly; 
" pray walk in the ball-room. Duke, you know 
that good Sir Hyppolite, don't you ? These are 
his cousins." 

The cousins bowed to the duke, who was stand- 
ing next to me, and addressing me the meaning- 
less compliments which those old beaux of the 
ancien regime are fond of paying to every young 
woman they meet. 

TTie duke bowed to the Bombay ladies, and 
then turned to resume his conversation with 
me; but I advanced to the ladies, shook hands 
with them, and said how glad I was to see them 
there. 

At this the duke condescended so far as 



2-6 ABOUT EXGLISH SOCIETY JOf PARTS. 

to actually address them on the subject of the 
"sreather, to their profound embarrassment. 

Mrs. Bombay mustered courage to say, " Yes, 
my lord duke, it is yery pleasant,'* and vrith. this 
the trio subsided for the eyening. 

This duke was the celebrated and funny old 

'Duke of B , well known in English society 

for his immense and yaluable diamond posses- 
sions : his curious old house in Paris, witli its iron- 
lined walls (wliich he at that time erroneously 
supposed to be burglar-proof) ; his queer old car- 
riage with its cream-colored horses; and lastly, 
for his elaborate but somewhat inartistic efforts 
for " making up " his face by means of cosmetics, 
which made him rather a subject for ridicule 
than for much respect. 

On that evening he was as heavily daubed 
witli rouge (et noir) as usual ; and also, as usual 
talking of his diamonds and — his cousin; for 
he also had a cousin, and a cousin, too, of an 
importance which thi-ew poor Sir Ilyppolite quite 

in tlie shade. The cousin of the Duke of B 

was Her Britannic Majesty, Queen Victoria, and 



ABOUT ENGLISn SOCIETY IN PARIS. 227 

this lady did the same cousinly duty for the duke 
that Sir Il^-j^polite did for the Bombays. 

I think the Bombays were rather "cut up'' 
at the cool way in which the baroness received 
them. 

But if they had had any of that sound practi- 
cal sense wliich it seems to me almost impossible 
to live in America without acquiring, they would 
have expected nothing else. Ko donbt the ba- 
roness considered Sir Ilyppolite quite a magnate, 
but his poor relations on the continent were 
another thing altogether, — as poor relations are 
apt to be, even in this country. 

Besides, to tell the whole truth, at the moment 
they appeared she was tired of standing at the 
door shaking hands with some people and curtsy- 
ing to others; and furthermore, she wanted to 

dance with the Duke of B , who had asked 

her, and who, while waiting, had been filliLg up 
the time by talking diamonds to me, — one of the 
subjects, by the way, on which I was and am still 
shockingly uninformed. 

At length the baroness was free, and the duke, 
ptitting his arm about her substantial waist, 



228 ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PARIS. 

muttered to me, as a parting bit of wonder- 
ment, — 

. " I Lave nothing on me now that is not buttoned 
with a diamond." 

The remark was overheard, it seems, for the 
Figaro of the following week aired the story in 
its columns, without contenting itself with print- 
ing the duke's initial only, as I am doing. 

It was only a few weeks after this that the 
duke was mercilessly robbed of all his jewels 
by his clever but wicked groom, Henry Shaw, 
who, learning the secret of the iron -ribbed walls, 
had easily found means to accomplish his nefa- 
rious purpose. 

The Bombays enjoyed themselves only mode- 
rately at the baroness' ball. 

Neglected by the young men, no doubt on 
account of the poorness of their toilets (who says 
fashionable men luiow nothing of these things ?) 
and overlooked altogether by the baroness after 
her cool reception of them, they moped about 
dismally, and even the supper failed to arouse 
them. 



ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PARIS. 229 

But Mrs. Bombay found an opportunity during 
the evening to communicate to me an important 
bit of news, — 

"I think Sir Ilyppolite will soon send for 
Helena to come stop a few weeks with him in 
London." 

This meant a world, — that Helena, the elder 
daughter, was to be taken to London, and under 
the celestial wing of Sir Hj^polite was to soar 
among the loftiest of the haute volee, there to 
find a winged mate, — a baronet, or a lord, or even 
an earl, perhaps, — to make her his own for ever- 
more, and invite his mother-in-law to live with 
them during a corresponding period. 

Mrs. Bombay had but a word more with the 
baroness, but that word was fatal. As she and 
her daughters were leaving, she said, — 

^'Madame la Baronne^'^ — for, though not one 
of the French-English, Mrs. Bombay had lived so 
long abroad that a little French would slip out 
occasionally, much to her annoyance, — ^^ Madame 
la Baronne, I trust you wdll come to see us." 

"Oh — ah — yes," replied the baroness, in a 
freezing tone. " What day do you receive ? " 
20 



230 ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PARIS, 

Mrs. Bombay colored a little, but like a woman 
of the world, had an answer ready, — 

" Thursday," she replied, in a sweet tone, giving 
her address ; and then she went her ways with 
her daughters. 

All, me ! If you had seen the wretched aj^jpar- 
tement to which the unfortunate lady with a 
cousin had invited this proud baroness to come, — 
fixing a " day of reception," at that ! 

A day of reception ! Hollowest of mockeries ! 
Their day of reception was every day, — -their 
visitors their duns, and almost these alone. 

For is it not clear, or have I been unconsciously 
veiling the melancholy fact, that Mrs. Bombay 
and her daughters were militia thingumies, only 
with a difference of sex, and that, in common 
with the captain, they were afflicted with that 
rheumatism which . rendered life in London im- 
possible, and life in Paris, or anywhere, the next 
thing to it ? 

The die was cast now. The baroness had been 
informed that Thursday was their reception-day, 
and without doubt the great lady would visit 
them the very next Thursday, and, in all proba- 



ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PARIS. 231 

bilitj, every successive Thursday, till the end of 
time. 

Their aj[ypartement was on the fifth story, and 
was composed of three small rooms, one of which 
was used as a Idtchen, one as a sleeping-room for 
the whole family ; and the third and remaining 
one — the drawing-room, where the baroness was 
to be received on Thursdays — was a shabby 
chamber, furnished \Aih. three rickety chairs 
covered with faded red plush and studded with 
dingy brass nails, with curtainless windows, and 
a clock with a persistent obstinacy for half -past 
four. 

This chamber might receive the baroness in its 
capacity of drawing-room, but three times a day 
must it return to the base uses of a dining-room, 
doing, as it did, a double duty. Ah, double? 
Triple. For at night, the weary maid-of -all-work 
stretched her fagged limbs on the floor, or on 
the centre-table, or on the chimney-piece, perhaps, 
for sofa or couch was there none. 

Expecting the baroness' visit, on Thursday 
every one at the Bombays' must be up and dressed, 



232 ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PABIS, 

hours, no doubt, before the baroness herself had 
thought of stirring. 

Breakfast must not be eaten in the drawing- 
room on Thursday. If Madame la Baronne 
should come during its progress ! 

iN"©, no. Breakfast must be eaten off the 
kitchen range, or in the bewilderment of the 
untidy little bed-room, w^here three people had 
slept, or they must go witliout breakfast alto- 
gether, rather than run the risk of having the 
baroness catch them at so plebeian an occupa- 
tion. 

And to dress in order to receive the baroness ! 

The two girls — one sick almost unto death — 
vainly protested that if she came at all, it was 
scarcely probable the baroness would come so 
early in the morning. 

If ! "Was there any doubt of her coming % 

Ko. Cousins of Sir Ilyppolite were not to be 
slighted. 

All formalities had been complied with. A 
visiting card of '^ Madame Bombay et les De- 
moiselles Bombay^'' with their addi-ess and their 



ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PARIS. 233 

Thursday, had been left at the baroness' door 
within three days after her ball. 

" And if " (Mrs. Bombay would observe) — " if 
the baroness was a little cool in her reception of 
US at her ball, — so much to think of at a ball, 
you know; and really, now I don't believe she 
quite understood, at the Tuoment, that we were 
cousins of Sir Hyppolite." 

As Thursday after Thursday passed away, and 
still the august baroness came not, the two girls 
endeavored to persuade their mother to give over 
these grand preparations and allow them to pur- 
sue their usual employments. 

For, quite in a secret way, the elder girl turned 
her talent for drawing to account, and the 
younger wrote pretty stories in French for chil- 
dren, disposing of her manuscript at a beggarly 
price to a publisher in Lyons. 

Eut the mother was immovable. Everything 
nmst be put aside on every Thursday, and the 
whole day long must the three sit with their hands 
folded in their laps, awaitmg the visit of the 
baroness. 

"Suppose she were to come and find you 
20* 



234 ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PARIS. 

working ! " exclaimed Mrs. Bombay in answer to 
the remonstrance; and there was no answering 
that. 

Three months and two additional Thursdays 
passed thus to my positive knowledge, and one 
day I saw in the London Morrdng Post that 

the Baroness W- had left Paris and gone to 

Home. I told Mrs. Bombay, in the hope of 
releasing her from her thraldom. 

"Not that I care in the least for her visit," 
was her comment, as she tossed her head angrily ; 
" for, after all, she is nobody. Her title was her 
husband's, and you know in Home any one can 
buy a title for a scudo or two ; and really, though 
I said nothing at the time, I certainly thought it 
odd in so old a woman as she to be dancing with 

that painted old fright, the Duke of B . 

So, as I said, I'm quite as well satisfied that she 
never came on any Thursday; but really, you 
know, it was a shocking piece of discourtesy to 
my cousin. Sir Ilyppolite." 

Solace came, and from the source whence I, at 
least, was far from exj)ecting it. 

Sir IIj^)polite wrote again, now extending a 



ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PABIS. 235 

positive iimtation to Helena to come over an 
once and spend a few weeks with his family in 
London. 

This letter caused eren greater commotion 
than the expected visit of the baroness. The 
agitation of the mother and the two girls, — the 
desire to fit Helena out elegantly, and the lack 
of means to accomplish so expensive a purpose, — 
the struggle to be gay, with its inadequate re- 
sults, — ah, it was very sad ! 

" You see," said the mother, " she is going into 
the very first society in London, — the — ve-ry — 
first," dropping the syllables as if they were hot, 
and were intended to scorch me, democratic 
American that I was ; " and she will be under the 
chaperonage of my cousin. Sir HyjDpolite." 

It really seemed a pity that a pretty girl, going 
as her mother said, into the very fii*st society in 
London from the brilliant centi-e of the oracles 
of toilette — Paris — should be obliged to go so 
poorly fitted out. But it was not to be helped. 

IS'ext came the anxiety of getting a passport, 
and — the passage money. But these were settled 
at last, and Miss Helena departed. 



236 ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PARIS, 

Poor girl ! Her troubles had but commenced. 

The very night she arrived in London the cele- 
brated Sir Hyppolite fell dead in a fit of apoplexy. 
The house where she had expected to see so much 
gayety was suddenly turned into a house of 
gloom. Her letters to her mother were a strange 
compound of awe, vexation, and disappointment. 

Of course, the girl had no affection for this 
grand cousin, w^ho had never done anything for 
them except serve as a medium for the mother's 
boasts. 

Horrible as it seems to say it, there was 
something almost ludicrous in this sudden death, 
for, as Mrs. Bombay remarked, " It seemed done 
on purpose to spite her." And whether her tears 
were tears of annoyance or tears of grief, it was 
not easy to determine. 

Helena returned to Paris in little more than a 
week after she had left it. 

The other lady, Mrs. Curry, was more fortu- 
nate. She had a very small but fixed income, 
and her daughter, by her beauty and grace, was 
making a marked impression on the hearts of the 



ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PARIS. 237 

gilded youth of London. Ko doubt she would 
soon be married off; and there was another to 
follow her footsteps and be married off in turn. 

But the marrying-off took four long and dissi- 
pated seasons to accomplish, and during the 
accomplishment the beautiful girl came over to 
see her mother in Paris. 

Her boxes, her flounces, her jewels, and herself 
(worst and most unmanageable of all) were to be 
crowded into the little ajppartement where her 
mother worried and fretted the year through. 
The visits seemed to afford little comfort to either 
party. 

" A j)iggish place you live in, mamma ! A 
a hole, — a wretched little o^JiiYQsole " (drawling 
out the last syllable in that manner so repulsive 
to the French ear). " What do you do it for ? " 

" My child, you are spoiled," returns the 
mother, gravely. " Remember, your father was 
not an earl." 

" My uncle is, thank fortune ! " says the girl. 

" Your uncle is, and he and your aunt are very 
kind to take care of you and provide for you at 
this important period of your life." 



238 ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PARIS. 

But these Paris visits to mamma in the wretched 
little GRiYQSole are few, far between, and of short 
duration. Miss Curry soon returns to London, 
and chaperoned by her aunt, the countess, her 
name appears again almost daily in the columns 
of the Morning Post, as having graced the 
queen's drawing-room with her presence, or 
inhaled the perfume of a rare rose at the last 
horticultural show with her aristocratic and 
well-cut little nose. 

Here I take occasion to say that what I have 
written is true in every particular. 

It must not be supposed that the captain of 
the militia thingumy, the Bombays, and the 
Currys, if real people at all, were poor wretches 
striving to obtain a foothold in society, failing 
in it and being properly snubbed by all people 
with any pretentions to good breeding. 

I have, of course, given fictitious names to these 
people, but to their friends I need not. 

At the house of Mrs. Curry, Ilis Eoyal High- 
ness the Duke of Cambridge was a visitor ; as also 
the Duke and Duchess of Hamilton (Princess 



ABOUT ENGLISH SOCIETY IN PAMIS, 239 

Maria of Baden), with their son, the Marquis of 
Douglas, tlie Earl and Countess of Fife, and 
tlie Earl and Countess of Kinnoul. 

These people, very elegant and distinguished, 
and possessors of immense estates (Lord and Lady 
Fife are close neighbors of the Queen in Scot- 
land, and are favorites with Her Majesty, who 
frequently visits them), are of course real per- 
sonages of birth and lineage. 

Sir H}^polite (with another name) was a mag- 
nate in London. His sudden death was deplored 
by all. 

And even the captain, the militia thingumy, 
was acknowledged to be a " gentleman," even by 
the proud old earl who called him a " penniless 
puppy." 

Therefore these people can not properly be 
classed among snobs. 

A snob is a vulgar person, who apes the man- 
ners of his betters. , 

These people were neither vulgar, nor did they 
ape. Their manners were their own, and as good 
as those of the titled people whose relationship 



240 ABOUT EXGLISH SOCIETY IX PAEIS. 

was the only claim to distinction of the class of 
which I have presented tvpes. 

Pride of money is better than this. Money 
made will sometimes bear testimony to talent, — 
almost always to tact or ingenuity; while this 
absurd and shabby pride of birth is proof of 
neither tact, talent, ingenuity, nor industry. 




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